Do you want to become more competent and comfortable in front of an audience? It’s much easier than you think: join Toastmasters!
I am member of my local Toastmasters chapter, and have benefited tremendously from my experience in the last year. It helps me give more effective presentations at work and be more at ease in big social gatherings.
I was curious to survey the clubs in the Arab region (I had already heard of a club in BAU in Tripoli and another in AUB in Beirut via YouTube a few months ago). I found that there are no less than 315 Toastmasters clubs in the Arab countries, the oldest being in Manama in Bahrain (established in 1964!), they’re distributed as follows. Click to see the club locations and schedules:
The Little Engineer from Lebanon is this year’s big winner and BioBusiness from Egypt is the first runner-up, while Arabic Coach from Yemen and EG-Bioinformatics from Egypt are named as second runner-ups at annual celebration of Arab entrepreneurship in partnership with Abdul Latif Jameel (ALJ) Company
The Little Engineer from Lebanon was recognized as one of the Middle East and North Africa’s most promising entrepreneurs and awarded with $50,000 as start-up capital at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Arab Business Plan Competition, hosted annually by the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Arab Region, in partnership with Abdul Latif Jameel (ALJ) Company.
BioBusiness from Egypt was named first runner-up, with a $15,000 prize to help realize their business aspirations, presented at a glittering gala event in Cairo, Egypt. Arabic Coach from Yemen and EG-Bioinformatics from Egypt received $5000 each in start-up funding, with all teams receiving mentorship from international business consultants and some of the Middle East’s most prominent decision-makers throughout the competition process. Read the rest of this entry »
Not only the Lebanese channel LBC imitates the immoral west for financial gains, by mixing unmarried women and men under the same roof, often in inappropriate positions, & gives the public access to bedrooms.
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Now they give us this!
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A busty girl, in a short dress, touching herself and grabbing her chest, to the delight of male -and female- viewers. To add to the insult, she pretends not to see the camera zooming to her breast!
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How did this soft-porn show passed censorship? (too bad it only lasts 2 minutes)
The Earth Journalism Awards started as a competition of approximately 450 submitted applications from over 100 countries. It is now 15 finalists from just 10 countries. Until December 9, this is YOUR chance to select the winning story which will be presented at the Earth Journalism Awards ceremony in Copenhagen, on December 14.
Raghida Haddad, from Lebanon, is executive editor of Al-Bia Wal-Tanmia (Environment & Development), a leading environment magazine in the Middle East. In 2008, she spent 2 weeks in the Arctic Ocean to witness global warming.
Raghida was among 14 journalists invited by the World Federation of Science Journalists to join an international scientific expedition onboard the Canadian research icebreaker Amundsen. In July-August 2008, she took a two week voyage in the Arctic Ocean to get first hand experience of global warming where it is unfolding the fastest, and relay this experience to readers throughout the Arab region.
She was the first Arab journalist to go this far north and field-report about meltdown and global warming.
Cant Drink Oil .org was launched during the Bangkok Climate Change Talks 2009, and sheds the light on the role of Arab governments in the current climate negotiations, by following on their positions, analyzing them, and push these governments to take stronger positions, in order to save the region and the planet from the catastrophic impacts of climate change.
While all lights were directed to the new Metro in Dubai…
Suddenly, public transport is ‘cool’ for Arabs. Thank you Dubai. (360east)
Arabs are car crazed. This is one generalization that is safe to make.
And Arab elites, are big car crazed. That’s another generalization safe to make.
No wonder that public transport systems across the Arab world have not really evolved since the 1960s. Increasingly fueled by easy oil money, and increasingly alienated from the needs of the masses, the health of cities or the safety of the environment, ruling and economic elites have made Arab cities into car cities. From Beirut to Cairo, and from Amman to Riyadh, it’s cars, cars and more cars. Cars cool. Busses Bad.
But as the Sheikhs of Dubai rode the US 7.8 Billion Metro tonight at 9 pm 9.9.09, suddenly, modern public transport has become cool.
… I couldn’t but remember sadly that many many years ago, the working train in Lebanon connecting Beirut to Damascus, even to Istanbul, Baghdad (Iraq) and Hijaz, in Saudi Arabia.
Here are some stories and pictures found on the internet:
In 1891 a French company obtained a concession to build a railway from Beirut to Damascus and this was soon merged with a Belgian project (CF en Sync) for a line to Muzeinib serving the rich grain area of the Hauran. Formed in Paris, the Societe des Chemins de fer Ottomans Economiques de Beyrouth-Damas-Hauran at first planned a metre gauge adhesion line but the difficulties involved in ascending the Lebanon range behind Beirut resulted in the adoption of the Abt rack system for part of the route.
The rack locomotive leaving the reversing station at Aley
en route for Bhamdoun, the next station up the line, 1974
The Little Engineer from Lebanon was recognized as one of the Middle East and North Africa’s most promising entrepreneurs and awarded with $50,000 as start-up capital at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Arab Business Plan Competition, hosted annually by the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Arab Region, in partnership with Abdul Latif Jameel (ALJ) Company.
The rack locomotive leaving the reversing station at Aley
Armigatus 