Category Archives: Uncategorized

Lebanese Xriss Jor Wins At Dubai Music Week, Signs Recording Contract With Quincy Jones

Whew! What a great voice and feeling for Etta James!

A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares

Xriss Jor Dubai Music Week

A jury that consisted of Timbaland and Will.i.Am chose Lebanese Xriss Jor as the winner of the talent part at the Dubai Music Festival, following her performance of Listen by Beyonce. As a result, Jor will sign a record deal contract with Sony Music and producer Quincy Jones, who has worked previously with Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra. She will get a single and a music video out of this.

Xriss was competing with Emirati singer Hamdan Al Abri, Dubai-based Lebanese band Jay Wud, Lebanese singer DD Fox and Sudanese R&B singer Nile.

I figured her name was familiar so I looked into her some more and it transpired that she was a contestant on The Voice and managed to reach the later stages of the show before being disqualified in the 1/4 finals. Those talent show contestants keep going at it until they hit the jackpot apparently. Another batch will…

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Goose (Kari) #haiku

I have followed a pair that has been together for 10 years at least.

penned in moon dust

geese

Recognized his voice

call to the one he held dear

they mated for life

*

they mated for life

flew close in each other’s sight

never collided

Photograph: Thanks to photographer Bryant Olsen for his excellent shot of the Ross’s Geese

to view more of his work (wildlife and nature) go here  (© under creative commons)

We continue to celebrate autumn at Carpe Diem the Goose (Kari) is the prompt for today

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We are on the move

hovercraftdoggy

"Laura is a 1990 born fine art & portraits photographer from munich, germany. she started taking photos at the age of 18 and quickly noticed that photography is the love of her life. starting as a selfportrait artist she learned everything she knows as an autodidact and then went on focusing on portraying actors and musicians." (via LauraZalenza)"Laura is a 1990 born fine art & portraits photographer from munich, germany. she started taking photos at the age of 18 and quickly noticed that photography is the love of her life. starting as a selfportrait artist she learned everything she knows as an autodidact and then went on focusing on portraying actors and musicians." (via LauraZalenza)"Laura is a 1990 born fine art & portraits photographer from munich, germany. she started taking photos at the age of 18 and quickly noticed that photography is the love of her life. starting as a selfportrait artist she learned everything she knows as an autodidact and then went on focusing on portraying actors and musicians." (via LauraZalenza)

Series of amazing photos, by photographer Laura Zalenza.

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“Laura is a 1990 born fine art & portraits photographer from munich, germany. she started taking photos at the age of 18 and quickly noticed that photography is the love of her life. starting as a selfportrait artist she learned everything she knows as an autodidact and then went on focusing on portraying actors and musicians.” (via LauraZalenza)

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Lebanon, Now RefugeeStan: Enough With The Humanity Talk?

A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares

I was going from my hometown to Batroun a while back when I saw two hitchhikers asking for a ride. I’m not the type to worry about such things – transportation between my hometown and Batroun, if you don’t have a car, happens through that method. So I picked them up and off to Batroun we went.

They were both men. The one sitting in the back was very quiet. The one sitting in front was pretty chatty. We were talking in Lebanese. I would have never thought there was anything odd about his dialect until I asked him where he was from and he replied: Homs.

He was worried about his reply so I tried to defuse the tension by saying that I visited his city back when it actually existed and it’s a nice place. The Syrian man, however, felt it was adamant to tell me that they…

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Egypt Through Time: Photographs From 1800-2013

Egyptian Streets

Since the 2011 revolution, old photographs of Egypt and classic films showing an elegant and prosperous Egyptian society have sporadically appeared on social networks. Essentially, many are searching to learn and be inspired by the past in order to build a brighter future.  Below, is a collection of photographs of Egypt (mainly from Cairo and Alexandria) taken between the 1800s and present day.

1800s

1900-1939

1940-1999

Present Day

[Photographs sourced from various locations – many without credits. Some sources include Egypt Zaman, The Denver Post, LIFE, and The New York Public Library]

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SUV Driver Kills 5-Year-Old Girl In Sunset Park: Gothamist

A 5-year-old girl was struck and killed by an SUV driver while crossing a street near her home in Sunset Park yesterday afternoon. According to the NYPD, Kiko Shao was “running northeast” on 55th Street towards 5th Avenue around 3:20 when the unnamed 28-year-old driver of a 2002 Cadillac Escalade hit her. Shao was pronounced DOA at Luther Medical Center. The driver remained at the scene and has not been charged, but like most of these horrific incidents, the investigation remains technically “ongoing” until it’s mostly forgotten by the general public.

via SUV Driver Kills 5-Year-Old Girl In Sunset Park: Gothamist.

Sri Lanka president uses his time in U.N. spotlight to lash out – latimes.com

The world body has repeatedly chastised Rajapaksa, culminating in charges by its chief human rights official this week that he was turning his island nation, just four years removed from a three-decade insurgency, into a dictatorship.

The State Department’s most recent human rights report blamed Rajapaksa’s government for concentrating power in the hands of family members, bullying activists and journalists, incapacitating the judiciary and repressing minority Tamils, the ethnic group that launched the war. A 2011 U.N. report cited evidence that Sri Lanka’s military had killed as many as 40,000 civilians, mostly Tamils, in the closing months of the conflict.

Rajapaksa has denied wrongdoing and accused critics of meddling in his country’s affairs. At the podium Tuesday, he suggested that the U.N. was the victim of “manipulation” by foreign agendas and blasted “the growing trend in the international arena of interference by some in the internal matters of developing countries, in the guise of … human rights.”

via Sri Lanka president uses his time in U.N. spotlight to lash out – latimes.com.