Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

The world’s tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa, opened amid heavy hype a month ago. But all is not well at the Burj. The skyscraper’s owners, Emaar Properties, just announced that they are indefinitely closing the property. The sudden news is a shock.

Why was the most well-known construction project of 2010 shut down, less than 60 days into the new year?

It turns out that tourists visiting the Burj’s observation deck had their worst fears come true. The elevators to the observation deck suddenly started spewing smoke and tourists were trapped on the observation deck. Guests were stuck on the observation deck without any way to get down for more than an hour. We’ll put it this way: rescue crews had to use ladders to reach stranded patrons on the 124th floor:

Michael Timms, a 31-year-old telecommunications engineer from the US, said: “I was walking around the observation deck when I heard this really loud noise and what looked like smoke or dust coming out from one of the elevator doors. There were at least 60 people on the deck at the time. Employees and security staff were telling people that everything was ok. But once it became clear we were not being allowed back down, some people got really angry while others started crying.”

Timms added: “Civil Defence, paramedics and the police all arrived on the scene. One of the elevators had not reached all the way to the 124th floor and I saw some people climbing a ladder from the elevator up on to the observation deck.” Timms said they were given an offer to return for free.

Let’s go back to the last paragraph of Timms’ testimony for a moment: Tourists visiting the world’s tallest skyscrapers were stuck in a broken, smoke spewing elevator more than 100 stories above the ground for more than an hour.

Emaar Properties says the shutdown is “routine”:

In a brief statement responding to questions, the building’s owner, Emaar Properties, blamed the closure on “unexpected high traffic”, but then suggested that electrical problems were also at fault.”Technical issues with the power supply are being worked on by the main and subcontractors and the public will be informed upon completion,” the company said, adding it is “committed to the highest quality standards at Burj Khalifa”.

This is the second elevator problem for the Burj recently. Several days ago, fourteen people were trapped for an hour in a stalled observation deck elevator that broke down at more than 1400 feet into the air.

A reopening date for the skyscraper has not been announced, but the Burj’s website is currently selling observation deck tickets for February 14th. Hey, we imagine that being stranded in a smoke-spewing observation deck could be pretty romantic for Valentine’s Day.

Making passengers reach for a Xanax?

There are proper places and improper places for airline advertising. This photo of a Turkish Airlines advert on an unfortunate escalator was recently posted by a user of aggregator site Buzzfeed. According to one commenter on the site, the picture was taken at the San Francisco Centre mall. However, we can’t confirm. Do any readers have more info?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Last week, CIA chief Leon Panetta apparently made a quiet trip to Jerusalem and Cairo. While there, news reports indicate Panetta met Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, defense minister Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, defense minister Ehud Barak and Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

Then, days later, Panetta told Congress a terrorist attack by al-Qaeda or its allies is “certain” in the near future. Did the CIA chief learn something while he was in the Middle East? According to Israeli intelligence news site Debkafile (who have been incorrect in the past), the meetings centered primarily on Yemen:

They discussed an Egyptian expeditionary force for Yemen to fight al Qaeda combatants alongside US special forces. Panetta requested for the use of Egyptian military airfields as jumping-off bases for US air strikes against the terrorist strongholds. In Jerusalem, the CIA chief exchanged evaluations on the Yemen front with Israel’s intelligence leaders.

Politico’s Laura Rozen states that the main conversation subject between Panetta and the Israelis, however, was Iran.

Egyptian paper al-Masr al-Youm speculates that Panetta may also have spent extensive amount of time discussing Iran with officials in their country.

Panetta’s last official visit to Israel took place in May 2009.

Pakistani diplomat Miangul Akbar Zeb

Pakistani diplomat Miangul Akbar Zeb was recently declined accreditation as his nation’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia. The problem, it seems, is that his name is a genital reference in Arabic.

Akbar is a common Muslim name that translates to “the greatest” or “the biggest.” Zeb is a relatively common Urdu name (زب) whose meaning in Arabic isn’t used in polite conversation. In other words, it’s a reference to the male genitals.

That’s right: In Arabic, Akbar Zeb is “the biggest dick.”

Previously, Zeb served as the Pakistani Ambassador to Canada, where his name presumably wasn’t much of an issue except for late night jokes at diplomatic cocktail parties.

A recent article in the Arab Times dances around the reason why Akbar Zeb’s credentials were declined (عربي), but run that article through Google Translate for such gems as:

There was still no statement from the GCC countries on the reason for refusing to accept the appointment (the biggest cock) ambassador to Pakistan, where … Arab Times was not able to know the reason too, but after research and investigation shows that the Pakistani diplomat (the biggest dick) is one of the biggest specialists in the Pak-US economic relations and has held an important post in successive Pakistani governments will be responsible for almost one US-Pakistan Economic Relations

But les GCC do not want (the biggest cock) and object to the appointment and refused to give his reasons.

For more English-language commentary, Foreign Policy has more on Akbar Zeb’s woes. Apparently, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have rejected his credentials as well.

Propaganda, Israeli style. Only, you know, in English.

It’s NGO vs. NGO in Israel… and both of the non-governmental organizations involved receive much of their funding from Americans.

Last week, Israeli right-wing “neo-Zionist” organization Im Tirtzu accused the left-wing New Israel Fund of defaming Israel. Specifically, they acused the New Israel Fund of being directly responsible for the United Nations’ Goldstone Report, which charges Israel (and Hamas) with war crimes in the 2009 Gaza conflict.

The New Israel Fund defines itself as “the leading organization committed to democratic change within Israel.” Based both in Jerusalem and Washington DC, the group works towards supporting free speech and religious pluralism in Israel. Many of their projects serve underrepresented segments of Israeli society such as recent immigrants, Bedouins and migrant workers. Their publications are primarily in English, their website is English-only and most of their fundraising takes place in the United States.

Im Tirtzu, meanwhile, call themselves “a centrist extra-parliamentary movement that strives to strengthen the values of Zionism in Israel and to renew and reinstate Zionist discourse.” The organization has been a key part of the “neo-Zionist” movement, which has encouraged attacks on left-wing professors at Israeli university campuses.

Then Im Tirtzu released a report blaming the New Israel Fund for the Goldstone Report:

A soon-to-be-released report by the Zionist student group Im Tirtzu, which accuses the New Israel Fund of direct responsibility for the UN’s Goldstone Report on the IDF’s Gaza offensive last winter, is “just another in a series of attempts to quash freedom of speech in the human rights and civil rights community in Israel,” the NIF’s CEO Daniel Sokatch told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

According to the Im Tirtzu report, 92 percent of the Goldstone document’s allegations criticizing the IDF’s conduct came from 16 Israeli NGOs that received some $7.8 million from the NIF in 2008-2009 alone.

Im Tirtzu members have begun a protest campaign to coincide with the release of the report, and on Saturday night they staged a mock rally of Hamas members outside the Jerusalem home of NIF chairwoman Naomi Chazan, a former Meretz MK.

Im Tirtzu has also sparked outrage – both in Israel and the US – with a full-page ad it took out in the Post’s Sunday edition that featured a caricature of Chazan with a rhinoceros horn bearing the letters “NIF” tied to her forehead. This was followed by a series of brutal attacks on the New Israel Fund in the Israeli press. Incidentally, Chazan is also the former Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament).

Apparently, holding a mock Hamas rally outside the home of an Israeli is now acceptable behavior for the country’s right-wing. The advertisement depicting Chazan as a rhinoceros is reproduced above. Meanwhile, a news report about the Chazan demonstration from a right-wing Israeli website sounds downright creepy:

Im Tirtzu, a growing grassroots movement which calls itself “the second Zionist revolution,” pretended to be Hamas terrorists during a demonstration outside the home of New Israel Fund (NIF) Chairwoman Naomi Chazan Saturday evening. The protesters donned Arab headdresses and imitated terrorists who thank Chazan for the NIF’s support following IDF counter-terrorist operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

However, Im Tirtzu is not as all-Israeli as it seems. Israeli journalist Danit Gottfried found out that Im Tirtzu received $100,000 from American pastor John Hagee. Hagee is the founder of Christians United for Israel, which collects financial donations from American Christians for right-wing Israeli organizations. Hagee also is arguably as anti-Semitic as they come, which still doesn’t stop right-wing Israelis from accepting his checks:

Hagee was in the headlines in 2008 during the US presidential campaign, when a recording circulated in which he claimed that “Hitler was fulfilling God’s will, to return the Jews to the land of Israel according to the biblical prophecy.” Right after the radical comment, Republican presidential contender John McCain had to repudiate Hagee’s public support. Additionally, in his book “Who Is a Jew?” Hagee claims that “Hitler was half Jewish, from the descendents of Esau,” and that “the Holocaust happened because the Jews rebelled and denied the real God.” He claimed that “Jewish rebelliousness is the reason for the anti-Semitism and persecution they suffered over the years.”

About the economic crisis that hit the US and the world in 2008, Hagee said that “the U.S. Federal Reserve is under the control of a few shareholders, including the Jewish Rothschild family.” He added that “the Rothschild family is part of an extensive economic conspiracy by strong shareholders who reside in Europe.” Hagee is considered a controversial and extreme figure among the Jewish communities in America, after he called the Reform Jews “poisoned” and “spiritually blind.”

But, at the end of the day, two Israeli organizations are fighting over the future of Israel… with American money. We find it especially interesting that the (ugly) propaganda advertisement sparking this whole quarrel is in English – and Israel, of course, is a Hebrew-speaking country.