The source declined to give any further information about the ongoing talks between MEA and Cyprus Airway.

“MEA is tight lipped about the talks. They will only disclose the details if goes through,” the source said.

Source: The Daily Star
It is very surprising for me to see our Lebanese Airlines company being able to afford buying stakes in another airline company facing troubles. I’m happy for that and hope it would be a transparent deal that would also give the Lebanese economy a positive push.

On the other hand I wish the exclusivity deal between MEA and the Beirut Airport would end by this year and won’t be renewed in a way to let new investor tackle the market and increase competition which will reduce the inflated prices of MEA J

Good Luck MEA

News Source: AMEInfo

What does this mean ? new investments coming to Lebanon, while we are all seeing the unstable situation in most countries around us. Usually we hear saying the Foreign investments are cowards and they always try not to tackle unstable markets. So why would an Emiratian Group take the risk and come to Lebanon ? 

iThink that Lebanese people should keep their country safe, to benefit from more and more foreign investments and try as much as possible not to interfere in what is happening in other countries! We already paid a lot in the last 50 years, it is time to become stable and safe ! 

Restaurants in major cities are now obliged to designate sufficient parking space for their customers in a bid to lessen traffic jams in popular areas, Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud said in a statement Friday.

“All tourism enterprises, particularly restaurants in major cities, should designate a geographic area, not exceeding two kilometers for a parking lot for their customers,” Abboud said.

Enterprises should also send the Tourism Ministry a copy of a contract within one month detailing that they have reserved an area for parking.

The minister also asked restaurants “to organize traffic in front of their entrances and not allow their valet attendants to park vehicles on public roads obstructing the movement of traffic.”

Source: The Daily Star

I really love this decision, the official authorities finally took the action and forced the restaurants to manage parking spaces for their client, is a way to get rid of the useless VALET PARKING service!

I really appreciate that finally someone is really caring for the macro economy in a way to avoid useless services and the labor force providing this service currently would shift to produce something else that would be more beneficial for the Lebanese economy! I would suggest all the guys working in valet parking to go and work in certain industries instead of the foreign labor force so that we would contribute in preserving the monetary mass inside our economic system!

With the filing, American became the last of the so-called U.S. legacy airlines to seek court protection from creditors. The Fort Worth, Texas-based company, which traces its roots to 1920s air-mail operations in the Midwest, listed $24.7 billion in assets and $29.6 billion in debt in Chapter 11 papers filed yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

“It’s painful but probably necessary,” John Strickland, an aviation analyst at JLS Consulting in London, said in a telephone interview. “They will have to go through the whole process that their peers have gone through.”

Job and flight reductions are likely in the future as AMR seeks to trim expenses and leave bankruptcy in less than 15 months, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Tom Horton said yesterday. Normal flight schedules will continue on American and its American Eagle regional unit for now, along with the airline’s frequent-flier program, the company said. A spinoff of American Eagle, which already had been delayed from this year into 2012, is on hold, Horton said.

More: Business Week

I just liked to share them with you , and you can see more picture on the Telegraph website 

The occupancy rate at Beirut hotels was the eighth lowest among 21 markets in the region, the same position it held last year, as reported by Lebanon This Week, the economic publication of the Byblos Bank Group.

The survey said the average rate per room at Beirut hotels was $222 in the first 9 months of 2011, ranking the capital’s hotels as the seventh most expensive in the region.

The average rate per room at Beirut hotels decreased by 15.3 percent year-on-year and posted the third steepest decrease among all markets in the region, behind Hurghada and Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt.

The average rate per room in Beirut came above the regional average of $183.3, which declined by 1.3 percent from from the original amount of $185.8 in the same period of last year.

Occupancy rates at Beirut hotels were 44 percent in January, 42 percent in February, 53 percent in March, 61 percent in April, 58 percent in May, 62 percent in June, 67 percent in July, 31 percent in August and 76 percent in September 2011 , compared to 64 percent in January, 76 percent in February, 68 percent in March, 79 percent in April, 71 percent in May, 77 percent in June, 80 percent in July, 43 percent in August and 53 percent in September 2010.

Further, revenues per available room (RevPAR) were $123 in Beirut hotels in the first 9 months of 2011, down from $179 in the same period last year, ranking it at 11th place in the region behind Muscat and Dubai and ahead of Al-Madina and Al-Ain.

Beirut’s RevPAR was down 31.2 percent year-on-year, compared to a decrease of 9.8 percent across the region. Beirut posted RevPARs of $99 in January, $84 in February, $107 in March, $120 in April, $119 in May, $142 in June, $184 in July, $63 in August and $187 in September 2011 compared to RevPARs of $160 in January, $209 in February, $155 in March, $208 in April, $158 in May, $188 in June, $270 in July, $120 in August and $141 in September 2010.

Dubai Beach posted the highest average room rate in the region at $300 and the highest RevPAR at $242, while Dubai Apartments posted the highest occupancy rate at 82 percent in the first 9 months of the year.

Source: The Daily Star 

Read more:
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)

Its takeoff into clear blue skies after a salute and shower by an airport fire truck came exactly 53 years after Boeing’s first ever jetliner, the 707, began commercial services in the Pan Am colors.

The Dreamliner does not fly any faster than that first aircraft, but it is not supposed to. Instead, it is designed to make the hours aloft more pleasant for passengers and cheaper to fly for owners battling for profit amid the rise of low cost carriers.

The Dreamliner that flew Wednesday with 240 passengers is owned by All Nippon Airways Co and a jubilant Shinichiro Ito, the airline’s president and CEO, described his brand new plane as a “game changer.”

He acknowledged, however, that production hiccups that delayed delivery for three years had put his carrier “through hard times”.

With its mostly carbon-composite body, Boeing’s technological flagship offers a 20 percent improvement in fuel efficiency and a 30 percent reduction in maintenance costs.

Its cabin builders promise a flight with ambient lighting engineered to lull passengers to sleep. The cabin also boasts higher air pressure that will make the interior feel like 6,000 feet rather than the 8,000 feet on other jetliners.

Passengers on ANA’s jet were treated to shifting hues of color, including a rainbow display as the aircraft lifted off from the tarmac in Tokyo, its engines a gentle whistle. The quiet engines and greater cabin air pressure might create a new problem in air travel: making conversations of fellow passengers easy to hear.

Its other bells and whistles include windows that are 30 percent bigger and which can be dimmed electronically, seat-to-seat e-mail, bidet-equipped lavatories with their own windows and bigger touchscreen entertainment panels.

Gino Bertuccio, an Italian cosmetic importer living in Miami, said he liked the windows, although he wondered how well they will work after wear and tear and curious children.

Bertuccio, who describes himself as an aviation enthusiast spent $30,000 in an auction to buy his ticket on the flight.

“I don’t have a wife that might say no,” he explained as the cabin dimmed to a mellow rainbow.

Boeing’s focus on making the 787 more comfortable and lighter also points to the reality that faster, gas-guzzling air travel is not the industry’s future.

The continuing squeeze on profits from budget carriers and soaring fuel costs have made the luxury of time-saving too rich for ANA and other airlines, and forced Boeing and European rival Airbus to adapt their products.

“For carriers with high operating margins, the 787 is critical for gaining a cost competitiveness,” said Masaharu Hirokane, an analyst at Nomura Holding in Tokyo. “For ANA to be a launch customer is a plus.”

The Dreamliner was originally conceived in 2001 as the “Sonic Cruiser,” designed for a bygone era of aviation that quickly morphed into one filled with bankruptcies. It was a design that promised the first serious speed increase since the advent of the now defunct Concorde.

Most jetliners cruise at around eight-tenths the speed of sound. The Sonic Cruiser promised mach 0.98, lopping hours off long-haul flights between Tokyo and New York. But back then oil was a third of the cost and as it began a climb to near $100 a barrel, Boeing and its airline customers changed course.

Thus was born the Dreamliner, its only link to the shelved Sonic Cruiser proposal being the use of carbon composites.

Source: Reuters

The pilots, the jet team of Swiss watch manufacturers Breitling, performed 25 minutes of maneuvers above Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport, which was closed for 50 minutes for the show.

Around 200 people, including the Swiss ambassador to Lebanon and other dignitaries, watched the team perform the moves, which included a 360 degree turn, a barrel roll and an apache roll in the Czech-made military training fighter jets.

The French pilots, who constitute the only non-military aerobatic team in the world, will next travel to Amman, Jordan.

Breitling has specialized in chronometers for aviation use since its establishment in 1884, and makes parts used in aircraft around the globe.

Source: The Daily Star

The agreement will see Hilton Worldwide enter Lebanon by converting the 195-room Habtoor Grand and the 183-room Metropolitan Palace to the Hilton Beirut Habtoor Grand and Hilton Beirut Metropolitan Palace.

Both hotels are located in the heart of Beirut and are expected to open in early 2012.

“Beirut is one of the liveliest cities in the world and a leading gateway destination between the East and West.

We have been looking forward to entering Lebanon and are very pleased that we are able to do so with this calibre of properties,” said Christopher J. Nassetta, president and chief executive officer, Hilton Worldwide.

“Equally, Waldorf Astoria’s heritage and prestige is a perfect fit for Dubai and it is exactly the right time for this luxury brand to join the expanding number of properties we have planned in the UAE.

Today’s announcement amply demonstrates our ongoing commitment to growing in the Middle East and consolidates our position as a leading hospitality provider in the region.”

Khalaf al-Habtoor, chairman and founder of Al-Habtoor Group said: “Hilton Worldwide and Al-Habtoor Group are two of Dubai’s biggest corporate names, and our capabilities as hotel developers combine perfectly with Hilton Worldwide’s expertise as hotel operators.

They were our partner of choice to help re-establish the two Beirut hotels and we are particularly thrilled to be part of the team launching the legendary Waldorf Astoria name in Dubai.”

Source: The Daily Star

i Think: 

This is a sign of future stability in the country! hope it is going to work and we will take a breath on the socio-economic level. 

Sierra Nevada Corp’s “Dream Chaser” space plane, which resembles a miniature space shuttle, is one of four space taxis being developed by private industry with backing from the U.S. government.

For the unmanned test flight, it will be carried into the skies by WhiteKnightTwo, the carrier aircraft for the commercial suborbital passenger ship SpaceShipTwo, backed by Virgin Galactic, a U.S. company owned by Richard Branson’s London-based Virgin Group.

The test flight was added after privately held Sierra Nevada got a $25.6-million boost to its existing $80 million contract with NASA.

The test flight will take place from either Edwards Air Force Base in California’s Mojave Desert, or from the White Sands Missile Range in NewMexico, Ed Mango, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said at a community briefing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

With the retirement of the space shuttles this summer, NASA is now dependent on Russia to fly astronauts to the space station, at a cost of more than $50 million per person.

The agency hopes to turn over crew transportation services to one or more commercial firms before the end of 2016, Mango said.

In addition to Sierra Nevada, NASA is funding spaceship development work at Boeing Co, Space Exploration Technologies, and Blue Origin, a start-up firm owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

“Having only one way to get crew to the station is a limitation,” NASA astronaut Mike Fossum, who is currently living aboard the outpost, said during an in-flight interview last week.

The station, a $100 billion project of 16 nations, was finished this year after more than a decade of construction 225 miles above the planet. The outpost, which is about the size of a five-bedroom house, supports a variety of scientific research and technology demonstrations.

Along with helping to develop commercial space taxis, NASA is working on a heavy-lift rocket and capsule to fly astronauts and cargo to asteroids, the moon, Mars and other destinations beyond the space station’s orbit.

Drawing heavily on equipment originally built for predecessor programs, including the space shuttle and the canceled Constellation moon exploration initiative, the new rocket, called the Space Launch System or SLS, is scheduled to debut in 2017.

That unmanned test flight would be followed in 2021 by a trial run with astronauts, said Kennedy Space Center director Bob Cabana.

Source: Reuters 

Lake Ellsworth’s been cut off from the world for at least 125,000 years and the scientists will use a hot-water drill to melt their way through to it.

They’re hoping to examine both the water and the mud at the bottom of the lake to help forecast climate change and find out more about life on Earth.

But no-one’s succeeded in doing this yet.

Lake Ellsworth is around the same size as Lake Windermere in Cumbria, one of the UK’s biggest lakes.

Experts reckon there are 387 underground lakes on Antarctica and it’s the heat from the Earth’s core that stops the water in them from freezing.

But the scientists need to work fast – once the hole’s drilled, it will begin to freeze again, so they’ll only have around 24 hours to get at what they’re looking for.

Source: BBC News

Eighty-five passengers, the first to travel the new lane, exited an Airbus 320 Sunday morning and then attended a reception for the occasion inside Rafik Hariri International Airport.

“The decision to open a Marseille-to-Beirut direct route stems from the role of the Rafik Hariri International Airport as an important, main destination in the region,” Michel Bou Abboud, general manager of Air France in Lebanon, told reporters.

He added that opening the route came after extensive research on the economic benefits of such a decision.

The airline is expected to have three flights every week between Marseille and Beirut. The flights are likely to operate Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

“To ensure the success of this project, the company adopted low prices that accommodate the tourism activity between the two countries,” Abboud added. The airplane received a warm welcome as a firefighting truck splashed it with water.
Source: The Daily Star 

While Jose Tomas, Spain’s finest matador, was the undisputed star of the evening, the honour of killing the last bull on Catalan soil fell to torero Serafin Marin, a native of Barcelona.

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Source: LFPRESS

What do you think

Sidon’s current municipal council decided to launch the project, which organizers say will return the city to the country’s tourist map, amid celebrations for the council’s first year in office.

The agreement to build the new hotel, designed to replace the city’s iconic but now dilapidated Hotel Tanios, was signed with the Lebanese Company for Hotel Investment and Development, owned by local businessman Ezzat Qaddoura.

The luxury hotel will be named after the city’s famous landmark Hotel Sidon, also known as Hotel Tanios, destroyed during the first years of the Civil War and again in 1982 during the Israeli invasion.

The municipal council announced the project at a news conference held to detail ongoing municipal projects.

Sidon Mayor Mohammad Saudi and Ezzat Qaddoura signed the agreement to build the new Hotel Sidon in the presence of a number of municipal members and businessmen.

According to Saudi, the hotel will be built on municipal land of 45,181 square meters in the Sidon neighborhood of Wistani, north of the city and near Rafik Hariri Cite Sportive, and will contain 84 rooms across four floors.

“Everyone knows of Sidon’s original Hotel Tanios and hopefully through Ezzat Qaddoura’s work, we will again return this hotel to the city, so that it can be enjoyed by both residents and tourists,” Saudi said.

The development of the new hotel will include the construction of breakwaters and a yacht club as well as other tourist facilities, Saudi said, adding that the next step will be completing the blueprints and obtaining a license to start building, hopefully by early next year, he added.

“The agreement will not be valid except after receiving approval by the Audit Bureau,” Saudi said, adding that “Sidon’s local residents will be given the chance to invest in the hotel.”

According to the agreement, Qaddoura’s company will own 20 percent of the shares in the hotel, while the remaining 80 percent will be offered to local residents interested in investment. Saudi called on such investors to examine the hotel’s feasibility study in the municipal building, or pay LL1 million to receive a copy of the study.

The agreement also stated that the period of investment and lease of the land will last for 35 years, during which the investing company should pay an annual allowance ranging between $125,000 and $275,000 to the municipality, unless the contract is renewed.

During the conference, Saudi also discussed the city’s major projects currently under implementation, primarily those connected to Sidon’s environmental crisis, including the Sidon dump project which is being implemented in three stage.

Source: The Daily Star

Do u think investors should consider Lebanon one of the safe countries for investments ?

Dr. Nabil Haddad, general manager at Jeita, feels that the discovery will help Lebanon’s campaign in the New7Wonders of Nature. “It’s a wonder of nature every time you find something new,” he told the Daily Star. He believes that in the future there will be even more discoveries, and hopes that the research team will attempt to find out more about the underground network beneath the Nahr al-Kalb Valley, an important source of drinking water in Lebanon.

Haddad thinks that Jeita Grotto is well placed to become one of the New7Wonders of Nature. “We hope we have a good chance, as we are one of the 28 finalists,” he said. “But we still need a lot of support from Lebanese, both inside the country and across the diaspora, as it’s such small country.”

Source: New Seven Wonders 

Vote for Jeita Grotto , to become one of the new 7 wonders!

He said that reservations on Aug. 28 and before the beginning of Eid stood at 70 percent, while occupancy was much less in the holy month of Ramadan, when most of the visitors were Europeans coming in groups and not Arabs.

“Arabs have only started to come during Eid,” he said.

His remarks were echoed by Elie Mahfouz, who works on the reservations desk at Mayflower Hotel in Hamra. “Europeans were our main visitors during Ramadan and the occupancy rate reached only 40 percent but it hit 100 percent starting the first day of Eid al-Fitr,” he said. Mahfouz expects this rate to remain fixed until Sept. 15.

Comments made by Beirut hotels’ were confirmed by Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud, who said that occupancy rates in Beirut hotels reached 100 percent during Eid al-Fitr but that they are expected to go down by the end of the first week of September.

“Occupancy rates this week stand at 100 percent in Beirut hotels but I don’t really expect a great improvement in the tourism activity following Eid al-Fitr and until the end of this year due to the turmoil prevailing in the region,” he told The Daily Star.

The Lebanese tourism sector has been hard hit since the beginning of the security and political turmoil in Syria, as most of the Arab tourists visit Lebanon by land via Syria.

“Tourism by land has dropped by around 80 percent during the past few months due to the security problems in Syria,” said Abboud.

Abboud has on many occasions announced that his ministry is trying to solve this issue by starting with low cost flights. “We are trying our best to start with low cost flights because, to be honest with you, this is the only solution we have,” he said.

This idea of starting with low cost flights was floated in the past couple of months after the tourism season in Lebanon witnessed a 65 percent drop in tourists coming by land, according to a statement made by Abboud during the month of July to the Voice of Lebanon Radio Station.

“We lost 21,000 Jordanian tourists and more than 20,000 Iranian tourists last month,” Abboud said, noting on the other hand a 12 percent rise in European and U.S. tourist arrivals.

Source: The Daily Star 

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The discovery of the civilization, named al-Maqar after the site’s location, will challenge the theory that the domestication of animals took place 5,500 years ago in Central Asia, said Ali al-Ghabban, Vice-President of Antiquities and Museums at the Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities.

“This discovery will change our knowledge concerning the domestication of horses and the evolution of culture in the late Neolithic period,” Ghabban told a news conference in the Red Sea port of Jeddah.

“The Maqar Civilization is a very advanced civilization of the Neolithic period. This site shows us clearly, the roots of the domestication of horses 9,000 years ago.”

The site also includes remains of mummified skeletons, arrowheads, scrapers, grain grinders, tools for spinning and weaving, and other tools that are evidence of a civilization that is skilled in handicrafts.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, is trying to diversify its economy away from oil and hopes to increase its tourism.

Last year the SCTA launched exhibitions in Barcelona’s CaixaForum museum and Paris’s Louvre museum showcasing historic findings of the Arabian Peninsula.

Source: Reuters 

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