Categories
Lebanon World

Egypt gets 2,250 Megawatts for 300 million $, Lebanon pays 1.2 Billion $ for 700 Megawatts

A friend of mine shared this link on Facebook, can anyone explain the huge price difference?

CAIRO, Sep 20, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) — –GE-Led Consortium Wins Expansions at Giza North and Banha Power Plants, Projects Will Add 2,250 Megawatts

–These Contracts Constitute the Largest Power Generation Order Between GE and Egypt

GE has signed contracts totaling US$300 million to supply six gas turbines and associated services to the Egyptian Electricity Holding Company for two new combined-cycle power plants near Cairo that will support Egypt’s rapidly growing energy needs.

Source

Categories
Internet World

2011, Mubarak, Wikipedia, Google

We live in a world were we can watch events unfold in another country the moment they happen, we can get updates from people on the ground via twitter, facebook…

We got used to all this! Today I was amazed by the fact that wikipedia was updated and google had already cached the new page less then an hour after Mubarak resigned!

Categories
Funny Lebanon Politics World

MTV is back!

MTV is finaly back!

Categories
World

Tsar Stuff (or really huge stuff made by Russians)

I am sure you know a lot of things about Russia, You know its Prime Minister/Judo teacher, The great Churches and Palaces of Moscow… But did you know about those four Items Russians created at some point in History?

Here’s a List of 3+1 Tsar Stuff or in other words Huge Stuff created by Russians.

We’ll start with the Tsar Cannon:

Tsar Pushka (Russian: Царь-пушка, literally “Tsar-cannon”) is a huge cannon, commissioned in 1586 by Russian Tsar Feodor and cast by Andrey Chokhov. The cannon weighs nearly 38 metric tonnes and has a length of 5.34 meters (17.5 feet), a calibre of 890 mm (35 inches), and an external diameter of 1200 mm (41 inches). The Guinness Book of Records lists it as the largest howitzer ever made.

Now for the only non Military Item in our list, The Tsar Bell:

The Tsar Bell (Russian: Царь–колокол, Tsar-kolokol, “Tsar bell”) is a huge bell on display on the grounds of the Moscow Kremlin. The bell was commissioned by Empress Anna, niece of Peter the Great.

The bell is currently the largest bell in the world,[1] weighing 216 tons, with a height of 6.14 m and diameter of 6.6 m. It was founded from bronze by masters Ivan Motorin and his son Mikhail in 1733–1735. Ornaments, portraits, and inscriptions were made by V. Kobelev, P. Galkin, P. Kokhtev, P. Serebryakov and P. Lukovnikov. The bell was never rung — during a fire in 1737, a huge slab (11.5 tonnes) cracked off while it was still in the casting pit.

For a time, the bell served as a chapel, with the broken area forming the door. There has apparently been some talk of recasting it.

Back to Military stuff with the Tsar Tank! This Tank is just a little weird, it doesn’t look like any Tank you’ve seen:

The Tsar Tank, also known as the Netopyr’ (Нетопырь, Pipistrellus bat) or Lebedenko Tank, was an unusual Russian armored vehicle developed in 1914–1915 by N.Lebedenko, Nikolai Zhukovsky, Boris Stechkin, and Alexander Mikulin. The project was scrapped after initial tests deemed the vehicle to be underpowered and vulnerable to artillery fire.

The tank was different from modern tanks in that it didn’t use caterpillar tracks—rather, it used a tricycle design. The two front spoked wheels were nearly 9 metres (27 feet) in diameter; the back one was a smaller, only 1.5 metres (5 feet) high, triple wheel, to ensure maneuverability. The upper cannon turret reached nearly 8 metres high. The hull was 12 metres wide with two more cannon in the sponsons. Additional weapons were also planned under the belly.

This is the +1 of our list, +1 because the name of this Item was given to it by the west in the cold war, The Tsar Bomba:

Tsar Bomba (Царь-бомба), literally “king Bomb”, is the Western name for the RDS-220 hydrogen bomb (codenamed “Иван” (Ivan) by its developers) — the largest, most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. Developed by the Soviet Union, the bomb was originally designed to have a yield of about 100 megatons of TNT; however that was reduced by half in order to limit the amount of nuclear fallout that would result. Two bombs were built, a mock bomb and the real bomb, with the real bomb being tested on October 30, 1961, in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago.[1] Despite testing, the weapon never entered service; it was simply a demonstration of the capabilities of the Soviet Union’s military technology at that time. The mock bomb was stored in the Russian Nuclear Weapons Museum in Sarov.

Source: Wikipedia 1,2,3,4

Categories
Economy Politics World

The US Collapse and the USSR Collapse

This morning I found this article predicting a US Collapse in the near future, comparing it to the Soviet one 18 years ago and finaly comparing the aftermath of both collapses. The article is really interesting and you should read it if you have time! if you’re in a hurry just read the slides in it and that will give you a good idea of what might happen in the US in the near future. The only thing the author forgot to talk about IMO is the effect of a US collapse on the rest of the world! It is no secret that everyone depends on the US in a lot of feilds (mainly technology Microsoft, Google, IBM , Intel … and the list is long) so what do you think will happen to the world if the US collapses? I am sure those companies will not be totally immune to a complete collapse of the United States Of America!

Categories
Lebanon People World

Prison Break – Lebanon

According to Naharnet a real life prison break (there’s a TV show called Prison Break in case you don’t know) is currently taking place in Lebanon. 11 prisoners escaped from the Zahle prison this week end and the police already got 5 back in. I am pretty sure that unlike the show those prisoners did some serious crimes so I am hopping they catch the remaining 6.

Another thing I saw at Naharnet was a WAN advertisement concerning journalist being held in China for speaking the truth, You can send a message demanding the release of all imprisoned journalists ahead of the Olympic Games from the WAN website here.

Categories
People Weird World

Crazy Saudi Arabia

Prosecutors in Saudi Arabia have begun investigating 57 young men who were arrested on Thursday for flirting with girls at shopping centres in Mecca.

For more info on the crime read the story on BBC!

Categories
Photography World

An Abandoned Russian City

Check out those pictures of Promyshlennyi, a Russian city that was abandoned by its citizen after the fall of the soviet Union. Apparently the government was too busy with other thing so they just cut off everything from the city and the people just left when the supplies ended!

Promyshlennyi abandoned city

Source [1][2]

Categories
People Weird World

A Cab driver accuses a customer of stealing his … Penis!!!

I read a lot of weird news stories but this one must be the weirdest! The story is in French but here’s a small translation by me:

Apparently a cab driver in a small town in Nigeria is accusing one of his customer of stealing his penis using a pigeon! The union of drivers is threatening to file a lawsuit if the penis isn’t returned in the next 24 hours and the police are taking it seriously and are searching for the missing “object”!

Categories
Lebanon People World

Spot the Difference!

Try to spot the difference between these two photos taken from yesterday’s BBC “In Pictures”.

Picture 1:

protester lebanon
In Lebanon, a protester holds up a piece of bread during a strike by agricultural and transport unions to protest against the rising cost of living.

Picture 2:

protester france
French teaching unions hold protests in the town of Caen over government plans to slash 11,000 education sector jobs.