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I Was Thrown Off A United Airlines Flight For Taking This Photo Of My Seat
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This post originally appeared on Upgrd.com’s Live and Let’s Fly.

Live and Let’s Fly has been silent the last three days as I weighed how I wanted to cover what happened to me on a United Airlines flight from Newark to Istanbul last week. The situation was both traumatizing and highly embarrassing and I wanted to ensure that I had ample time to consider what transpired before hurling any accusations or failing to understand the other side. But frankly, the more I replay the incident in my mind, the more certain I become that I was wronged. Here’s my story: Last Thursday I was scheduled to fly from Newark to Istanbul on United’s direct flight. The 767-300 was outfitted in a two-cabin configuration, staffed by a legacy United crew, and I had been upgraded to business class. It was my first time on this reconfigured aircraft and my first longhaul in the Continental BusinessFirst seat. Naturally, I wanted to provide a review for you.

As I settled into my seat, I pulled out my iphoneto take a few pictures of the seat. When I held the phone at forehead level to take the picture below, a flight attendant came running over and told me that I could not take any pictures of the cabin. She referenced this section of the Hemispheres magazine:

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Tanzanian bishops stress peace as murdered priest laid to rest
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CNA STAFF, Feb 22, 2013 / 04:08 pm (CNA).- The bishops of Tanzania called on the local people to work and pray for peace after the recent murder of Father Evarist Mushi on the island of Zanzibar.

Bishop Tarsisius Ngalalekumtwa, president of the Bishops’ Conference of Tanzania, said in his funeral homily that the first victim of the killing is the peace that exists between Christians and Muslims in the country. He urged the community to resist the temptation to respond to the tragedy with more violence.

  was killed Feb. 17. Reports indicate that the priest was killed on his way to Sunday Mass by two men on a motorcycle, who shot him in the head.

In addition to Bishop Ngalalekumtwa, six other bishops attended the funeral, including Cardinal Polycarp Pengo, Archbishop of Dar es Salaam, as well as the president of Tanzania, Jakaya Kikwete, who is Muslim.

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DOWN ON STARTUPS
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As startup prices soared in the runup to last year’s Facebook IPO, entrepreneurs, investors, and tech observers sometimes griped about lofty valuations.

Just mention Foursquare, say, or LivingSocial, and they’d go off.

These are tech companies that snagged a lot of press and tens (or hundreds) of millions of dollars before solidifying their business models. Investors say they’re worth tons of money—but in the end, that’s a gamble, and the companies may actually be worth nothing.

After a few years of massive hype in the startup sector, absurd-sounding valuations are starting to correct themselves. Startups are confronting the prospect of raising "down rounds" from investors—or rounds of financing that value the companies at less than the previous round.

LivingSocial, for example, was once valued at $5.7 billion; it’s now worth a quarter of that, or less, depending on whom you ask.

But more often, down rounds happen at a far earlier stage, a result of too-lofty valuations assigned in initial financings. 

What happens when companies that were once worth billions of dollars suddenly find themselves worth much, much less? And why were they ever valued that high in the first place?

 

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Contacts intensify to reach law consensus
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BEIRUT: Lebanese leaders intensified contacts Wednesday in a bid to achieve consensus over a new electoral law, as a source close to Speaker Nabih Berri said he would not call Parliament to vote on the controversial Orthodox proposal. Separately, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said during talks with Prime Minister Najib Mikati at the Grand […]

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Syria rebels poised to strike Hezbollah
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  The Free Syrian Army is poised to launch a military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon after a top commander on Wednesday formally confirmed a 48-hour ultimatum for the Shiite group to stop “firing” on rebel positions in the Homs province. "As soon as the ultimatum ends, we will start responding to [Hezbollah] sources of […]

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Lebanese probe: How Mughniyeh was assassinated
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Tne newwspaper Al-Akhbar has led a journalistic investigation into the 2008 assassination of top Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh. The report, which ends with the somber tears of his mother, has turned up new details regarding the operation in Damascus that left the senior commander of the Shiite group dead.

After the Second Lebanon War, Mughniyeh was charged with rehabilitating Hezbollah’s fighting capabilities and weaponry. "Damascus was the main station for the task, which meant that (he) had to intensify his travel to and from Syria," the online newspaper claimed.

"At the time, Mughniyeh, much like many operatives… treated Syria as one of the safest places. There was a presumption that Israel would not target Syria through direct operations," the paper explained, claiming there was an "implicit laxity" which de-facto created the possibility for his imminent assassination.

 

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Review: 961 Beer Lebanese Pale Ale
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No two brewers are alike. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but the three brewers who wandered into my life last week were an MIT fermentation scientist (Mystic’s Bryan Greenhagen), the founder of American craft brewing (Boston Beer’s Jim Koch), and a former investment banker turned airline mogul who started the first microbrewery in the Middle East (Mazen Hajjar of 961 Beer).

It’s doubtful any other career path would unite these three, but I found myself having similar conversations with each brewer as I plotted out stories for the week and reflected on larger truths in the way that only a couple of beers can inspire. Extreme beer was a major topic with two of the brewers; all three agreed that they prefer to brew the kinds of beer they like to drink themselves. And there’s serious industrious talent and business chops in anyone crazy enough to start their own brewery.

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Electricity barge docks at Beirut Port
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  BEIRUT: The first of two Turkish electricity-generating ships aimed at helping resolve Lebanon’s endemic power shortages anchored at Beirut Port Monday, a port official told The Daily Star. “The ship docked at Beirut Port this morning [Monday],” the official said. Karadeniz Powership Fatmagul Sultan, which departed from Istanbul on Feb. 8, entered Lebanese territorial waters […]

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