Category: News

According to a news article dated June of this year, the Arby’s and Wendy’s franchises for the Middle East and North Africa were taken by a Saudi conglomerate. This sadly means the first branches which are scheduled to open early 2010 won’t be in Kuwait but will be in Saudi.

Wendy’s/Arby’s Group, Inc. (NYSE: WEN) today announced an agreement with Saudi Arabia-based Al Jammaz Group to build 135 dual-branded Wendy’s® and Arby’s® restaurants in nine countries in the Middle East and North Africa over the next decade.

Here is the link to the article. [Link]

Thanks ElHaddad

I can see this huge fire from my window in Kuwait City. A friend of mine that works in one of the buildings on the Gulf Road near the Scientific Center told me its a restaurant after Green Island. That could be Burj Hammam which already caught fire before. If you have any details, videos or pictures [Contact Me]

update: so far I’ve heard it’s either the Lebanese, the Saudi or the UAE embassy, a power generator or a gas station.

update2: Seems most probably is was a power generator that caught on fire. Below is a video that was shot by one of my readers.

[YouTube]

Sydney got hit by a dust storm and it’s all over the news so I checked out the pictures and it just looks like one of the regular storms that hits Kuwait. Not a big deal but I guess they just never got one before. [Pictures]

Just the other night I was watching the movie 11:14 and thinking how I’ve started to like Patrick Swayze more as he’s gotten older. Very sad. [Link]

This is a pretty messed up incident. A British soldier in civilian clothing got ambushed by five guys in Kuwait City and then held captive. Luckily he managed to escape by jumping out of a first story balcony. [Article]

Update: According to Al-Rai newspaper the British government is denying this incident took place. Here is the article (it’s in Arabic). [Article]

Ra’ed Qutena the photojournalist took pictures showing the aftermath of the wedding fire and uploaded them onto flickr. Looks like nothing was left standing. [Link]

Thanks Nibaq

This is a huge tragedy and a very sad event. [YouTube]
The video above is in Arabic but there is an English version from BBC [Here]

[YouTube]

Thats pretty messed up. Back in 2005 I shot pictures of the cops shoot out with some terrorists in Salmiya and you can see those [Here]

Thanks Kent

According to a reader Saied, the whale shark thats been stranded at Marina Crescent for a week now was saved. They were able to place the whale shark onto a marine parachute bed like device and then pull the whale shark out to sea where it was then set free. Around 15 divers took park in this rescue which lasted around 9 hours. Saied will be sending me pictures and once I get them will post them here.

Update: Got the pictures, check them out below. Thanks Saied!

I was on the 4th Ring Road on my way to Avenues for lunch today when I spotted a large cloud of smoke in the distance. I kept driving towards it past Al-Rai until just before the roundabout at the end of the 4th Ring Road I spotted the source of the smoke. There was a large fire at a construction site. I parked my car on the side and managed to shoot a video of it with my BlackBerry which you can watch above. [YouTube]

Now later in the day around 4:30pm I was on my way to Bin Khaldoun street in Hawalli to buy some computer speakers (which I will post about later) when I spotted another fire. There was a black parked Jeep that caught fire and then the two cars parked next to it also caught fire. I was there before the fire trucks came and was able to capture all of it on my Sony camera. I would have gotten closer but I’ve watched too many movies and a car on fire always ends up in a large explosion so I kept my distance. Its a good quality video and you can watch that above. Below is a picture showing how the fire damaged the three cars. [YouTube]

Henry Surtees, 18, the son of motorsport legend John Surtees was killed in a “freak” accident during a Formula Two (F2) race. You can see the accident in the video above, a car crashes into a side barrier and one of the tires flies off and bounces towards the track and hits Henry in the head while he was racing. If he was just a bit faster or just a bit slower the tire would have missed his head and hit the car. Extremely unlucky and very very sad. [YouTube]

There was article on CNN.com today about a family in Saudi Arabia that is taking a genie to court on harassment charges. My question is this, if the family wins, how does the genie pay them? [Link]

[YouTube]

Kuwait won 3 gold medals, 3 silver and 5 bronze at the recent Asian Youth Games that were held in Singapore. I checked out YouTube and managed to find two interviews with two Kuwaiti participants, one of them is Hessah Al Zayed (above) who won a bronze in shooting while the other is a table tennis player (below). Overall Kuwait came 9th out of 39 countries that participated in these games. Thats pretty cool.

[YouTube]

According to a report by nef (the new economics foundation), a UK-based independent think tank and research group, Kuwait ranked 128th on the Happy Planet Index out of 143 countries researched. The happiest country in the world is Costa Rica (surprisingly not Netherlands) while Saudi Arabia ranked 13th (?????) and Lebanon ranked 110.

Here is the link to the full list. [Image]
Here is a link to the full report. [PDF]

This is too funny. A husband and wife were traveling from Malaysia to Saudi Arabia after their honeymoon. While at the Malaysian airport the wife went into the bathroom and it seemed she took too long because the husband got tired of waiting and boarded the plane without her.

The woman in question, a teacher, had gone to use the facilities at the airport before boarding a flight back to Saudi Arabia.

Quite how long she stayed in the toilet remains unclear. What is certain is she emerged to discover her husband had vanished without trace. The woman, who had paid for the holiday, began a desperate search of the airport and grew increasingly concerned that something terrible had happened to him.

When he arrived at his destination, he calmly told relatives his new wife was still in Malaysia. His bride was not so calm about his behavior. She has demanded an immediate divorce.

Here is the link to the article. [Link]