“I have always believed in the integrity of horse racing and all other horse sports,” Sheikh Mohammed, ruler of Dubai, said in a statement.

“I have, in light of the unfortunate recent event, directed that a decree be issued making, with immediate effect, the import, sale, purchase or use of anabolic steroids in horse sports a criminal offence under the UAE penal laws.”

Sheikh Mohammed said last month that he was appalled and angered about the positive tests for steroids at Godolphin’s Newmarket stables in England.

Trainer Mahmood al-Zarooni was banned for eight years by the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) after 11 horses tested positive in April.

Seven more horses trained by Zarooni proved positive for the anabolic steroid stanozolol in further tests, the BHA said last week.

“Regrettably, one of my stables in Europe has recently fallen below the standards that I expect and will tolerate,” Sheikh Mohammed said in Thursday’s statement.

Rules on using drugs in horse racing vary around the world.

Under current rules, the use of anabolic steroids is permitted out of competition in the UAE, as it is in Australia.

Sheikh Mohammed, who temporarily closed the Moulton Paddocks stables and ordered the testing of all the horses in Zarooni’s care after the positive tests, said Godolphin would recover.

“As soon as the internal investigations are complete and the requisite pre-emptory rules are put in place, Godolphin will go from strength to strength and lead, once again, adherence to the highest standards in that gracious sport,” he said.

Godolphin, which takes its name from The Godolphin Arabian, one of the three foundation stallions imported into England nearly 300 years ago, have won 204 Group One races in different countries since Sheikh Mohammed established training operations in Dubai and England in 1992.

Ian Larkin was due to replace the Abu Dhabi-listed lender’s current CEO Graham Honeybill in July but barely six weeks since arriving at the bank to prepare to take the helm the former managing director of Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance has quit, the sources said.

“His style of working didn’t quite fit in with the bank’s way of functioning,” said one of the sources.

A spokeswoman for the bank declined to comment.

In one of the biggest ever bank heists, a global cyber crime ring stole $45 million from RAKBANK and Oman’sBank Muscat by hacking into credit card processing firms and withdrawing money from ATM cash machines in 27 countries.

RAKBANK was targeted in December and had nearly $5 million stolen, although no customers suffered any loss, the bank said at the time.

No decision on a new CEO has yet been taken, the sources added. Larkin resigned earlier this week.

Honeybill was due to become a non-executive director of the bank once he retired in July, sources said in April.

The event comes amid thought-provoking research indicating that more than 90% of the user-generated passwords in the Middle East – including the ones which IT professionals deem to be “strong” – are actually susceptible to hacking, leaving the door open for billions of dollars in potential financial, reputational and strategic damages.

These revelations are according to the 2013 Middle East TMT Predictions by global firm Deloitte. According to the study, underlining the need for urgent solutions by information security experts is the fact that while it previously took cyber criminals about 5.5 hours to crack any eight-character password, they are now resorting to “crowd hacking” where criminals outsource the task to thousands of other machines and fellow hackers, enabling them to decipher the codes and undo years of IT professionals’ work in mere seconds.

Recently, regional online payment provider CashU has also warned Middle East PC users to remain diligent and protect their PCs with up-to-date antivirus in light of the recent malicious attacks across the region. A virus called “ransomware,” has been spreading across the region, prompting users with an onscreen message that their PC is locked and asks users to send a set amount of money via CashU service to have their PC unlocked. It has documented attacks in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar, as well as the Levant.

“These phishing attacks are primarily targeting PC users with the aim of collecting private information such as user data, financial and password information,” said Omar Soudodi, acting CEO of CashU.

According to a Ponemon Institute report that was commissioned by Juniper Networks, web-based and DoS (Denial of Service) attacks are the most serious types of attacks reported by respondents’ companies – making up 62% and 60% of the cases respectively. This has motivated the participants at GISEC to collaborate and share information on recent attacks so that criminals can be identified by their modus operandi.

Kevin Mitnick, hacker turned international cyber security guru, will speak at the GISEC Conference to share his perspective on the threat of “social engineering” – a highly effective type of attack that exploits the human element of corporate security.

While relatively unknown to the general public, the term “social engineering” is widely used within the computer security community to describe the techniques hackers use to deceive a trusted computer user within a company into revealing sensitive information, or trick an unsuspecting mark into performing actions that create a security hole.

Mitnick is to illustrate why a misplaced reliance on security technologies alone, such as firewalls, authentication devices, encryption, and intrusion detection systems are virtually ineffective against a motivated attacker using these techniques.

Riyadh plans to install 41,000 megawatts (MW) of solar power over the next 20 years, but to date has built only 12 MW – or less than even Britain installed in early May.

Despite year round sunshine, the oil and gas rich countries of the Gulf have lagged far behind most of the world in solar power – so far. Saudi energy officials have talked of becoming major solar players for years, but while China built 5,000 MW in 2012 alone, Saudi solar capacity is still insignificant.

That is set to change, with an economic argument too strong to ignore.

“Saudi Arabia is determined to diversify its energy sources and reduce its dependence on hydrocarbons,” saidWail Bamhair, the project manager for the Saudi team that visited the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) last week.

“Renewable energy isn’t just an option, but absolutely necessary. We have the means to build renewable energy, and we need to do it,” he said in a statement published on the NREL website during the Saudi delegation’s visit on May 13.

Five years ago, high costs made harnessing the sun’s rays an uneconomic way to make electricity and development was driven mostly by environmental concerns of European politicians.

Thanks largely to multi-billion dollar subsidies, Europe had 70,000 MW of solar photovoltaic installed by the end of 2012, compared to a global total of 102,000 MW, according to data from the European Photovoltaic Industry Association.

Dim growth in debt-ridden Europe, combined with a trade spat that could limit EU panel sales to China, means the Saudi programme is a vital potential export market – and the economics should now guarantee that it takes off.

Solar panel prices have fallen more than 80 percent over the last five years, because of global over-supply and lower demand in Europe, while average annual Brent crude prices have risen by a third, making the sun a very cheap source of electricity for a country that currently burns oil which it could export for over $100 a barrel.

After years if stalling on solar, Saudi authorities now appear to be moving quickly to capitalize on the slump in costs, with contracts for the first round of 500-800 MW of solar power expected before the end of 2013 and a target of over 5,000 MW installed in the next five years.

“Solar in the Middle East is not being prompted today based on environmental or reputational concerns. It is simple economics,” Michael Parker, an energy analyst at Bernstein Research said in a May 10 note.

NEC Display Solutions launches Full HD 3D ready compact meeting room projector 

The PE401H is NEC’s first semi-professional compact Full HD 3D projector

​Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 23 May 2013 – NEC Display Solutions Europe has announced the launch of the PE401H semi-professional Full HD 3D ready meeting room projector, further raising the standard in image quality and benefits to meet customer demand for a compact high resolution meeting projector with high brightness and outstanding performance.

The latest addition to the NEC projector portfolio brings a range of benefits for corporate and for higher education customers. These include high brightness with perfect image quality for even the smallest details through its 1080p resolution with 2000:1 contrast. All HD and 3D content, including Blu-Ray, is delivered in extraordinary picture quality with HDMI 3D support.

Its compact design, measuring 350mm by 280mm, and the large 1.7x optical zoom, allows greater flexibility when using the projector in mid to large meeting rooms or classrooms. Even at this very compact size, the 4000 ANSI lumens makes it suitable for recommended screen sizes of up to 130″ in normal office ambient light conditions. The large 1.7x optical zoom allows high flexibility in positioning the PE401H towards the screen. This also helps to minimise replacement costs of ceiling mounted units as the position of the mount usually doesn’t need to be changed when replacing an old projector.

A variety of different inputs such as HDMI 3D, Video, S-Video, Computer and Audio inputs allow connectivity with all types of digital and analogue input signals such as desktop computers and notebooks, sound systems, Blu-Ray players, and visualisers.

“The PE401H brings together so many benefits of our projector range in its unique style setting it apart in the semi-professional projector market,” said Ian Gobey, General Manager for Middle East & Africa at NEC Display Solutions. “Designed with NEC’s uncompromising quality, reliability and eco technology, the PE401H has so much to offer customers looking for a compact Full HD projector. We are excited to bring this projector to the market as it enhances our total projector portfolio and responds to the growing need for higher resolution when sharing visual information with a larger audience.”

NEC will offer a free DisplayNote Presenter licence to all customers buying the new PE401H projector, valid until 31 March 2014. To learn more about the collaborative solution as well as the free DisplayNote Presenter licence, please visit: http://www.displaynote-nec.com

Availability and warranty

The NEC PE401H projector is available from June 2013 across EMEA. NEC Display Solutions Europe offers a three-year pan-European service warranty and the lamp is covered for six months or 1,000 hours, whichever comes first. Education customers can register to have the lamp warranty extended to 3 years / 3,000 hours, as well as several other benefits.

Follow us on Twitter at @NEC_Display_EU to keep up-to-date with all recent NEC Display Solutions news in Europe. NEC Display Solutions Europe GmbH has its European headquarters in Munich, Germany and is responsible for all business activities in EMEA. NEC Display Solutions benefits from the technological know-how and technologies of the NEC Corporation and, with its own Research and Development, is one of the world’s leading manufacturers offering the widest product range of display solutions in the market. The display product portfolio ranges from entry-level to professional and speciality desktop LCDs, via large-size Public Displays for Digital and Retail Signage. The Projector range offers products for all needs, from portable devices via business projectors to products for permanent operation (such as PoS applications) and digital cinema projectors. Bernd Eberhardt is President and CEO of NEC Display Solutions Europe.

Further information can be found online at: www.nec-display-solutions.com

A non-Saudi, whose nationality and age were not given, died on Tuesday, the Health Ministry said on its website late on Wednesday. It said he had been admitted to a hospital in al-Qassim several days ago with an “acute respiratory syndrome”.

“Most cases recorded so far are among elderly patients and people with multiple chronic diseases,” it added.

A World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman confirmed it had been notified of the new death from the disease, which the WHO plans to call Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

“It is in a different area and doesn’t appear to be linked to the recent outbreak and cluster in the eastern part of the country,” Glenn Thomas told reporters in Geneva.

The WHO’s tally of people who have died in the kingdom from nCoV/MERS since it surfaced last year is 18, including one who died in Britain last year after arriving from Saudi Arabia.

The virus, which can cause coughing, fever and pneumonia, is from the same family as the one responsible for an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that killed 775 people worldwide in 2003.

The WHO says a total of 44 cases of the new virus have been recorded so far, 22 of them fatal. Saudi Arabia has had 33 of the cases.

WHO officials say the new virus appears to be transmissible between humans, but only after prolonged, close contact.

“We appreciated the strong community turnout and enthusiastic participation that contributed to an enlightening exchange of ideas this year,” said event chair Dr Catherine Demangeot, a Senior Lecturer at Strathclyde Business School UAE.

The morning began with a thought-provoking academic keynote by Dr Ron Bradfield, Strathclyde Global MBA Director and an expert of scenario planning, on the potential future scenarios of social media. Dr Bradfield discussed the recent escalation in social media use by businesses and consumers alike, and the new but widespread assumption that social media – as we know it – will become an increasingly important market channel. Dr Bradfield challenged the safety of that assumption by presenting a variety of high-impact potential outcome states in which social media structure, function, and importance could change in the future. In many of these scenarios, the social media marketing strategies of inflexible organizations would be put at high risk of failure.

Participants then broke into separate groups for poster presentations and lively discussions about their track of choice: Branding in the Middle East, Cultures of the Middle East, Social Media Routes to Market, or Islamic Marketing.

Four rapporteurs later presented brief overviews of the ideas discussed in the various tracks’ groups, and brainstorming on each topic was extended to the entire audience. As branding specialists weighed in on approaches to social media and Islamic marketing experts shed light on how to satisfy the needs of a multicultural population, the extension of expertise across academic/practical and topical boundaries raised interesting questions to be explored in the coming year and discussed further at the 2014 roundtable, when academics and practitioners will again convene to explore the particular challenges and opportunities offered to marketing practitioners and researchers in the Middle East.

Additional food for thought was provided by practitioner keynote speaker Ali Faour, a Director at Memac Ogilvy who shared his insights from 19+ years of regional marketing, public relations, and corporate communications practice. Using specific examples from his experiences with an impressive range of well-known global and regional brands, Mr Faour discussed how the explosive development of the UAE has been accompanied by a host of marketing industry revelations. Before encouraging audience questions, he provided sage advice about using research to better understand Middle East markets and customers, but not allowing ourselves to fall victim to paralysis by analysis. Highlighting the courageous approach of local companies that approach marketing and business growth as if the sky were the limit, he encouraged marketers to take initiative and try out new approaches without fear of failure, but rather with a willingness to learn, adapt, and respond.

About Strathclyde Business School:

Winner of the Times Higher Education UK University of the Year 2012-2013, the University of Strathclyde is one of only 57 institutions in the world to hold all three major international accreditations (AMBA, AACSB, and EQUIS) for its MBA programme, which is also accredited by the UAE Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research. In the recent 2013 Financial Times Global MBA rankings, Strathclyde Business School ranked in the top 100 MBA programmes in the world, and in the top 25 in Europe. The University of Strathclyde was established in 1796 as ‘the place of useful learning’ and this remains its mission today: to combine academic excellence with social and economic relevance. The university is committed to the advancement of society through the pursuit of excellence in research, education and knowledge exchange, and through creative engagement with partner organizations at local, national and international levels. With a UAE presence that was established in 1995, Strathclyde Business School offers part-time executive MBA programmes via state-of-the-art campuses in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi. For more information, please log on to www.strath.ae.

Sending your child to a Dubai school is an expensive exercise. First you need to compare all the Dubai schools to find the right one for your child, and your wallet.  You can search by location, curriculum and eventually sort by fees and more importantly compare all the extra costs such meals, school fees and extra curricular activities.  According to a recent study by our team at Souqalmal.com, prices range from Dh2,500 a year to more than Dh90,000, depending on the establishment you choose, so it’s not a decision you can take lightly.

But as well as the fees, there are a whole host of other expenses to consider. From school shoes and uniforms to school trips, lunches, craft markets, book fairs, charitable donations, presents for teachers and more; sending a child to school is more than the standard fees.And it’s not just what happens in school hours that you need to consider.

Getting to and from school will cost too. If you are driving there yourself there is petrol to consider, otherwise a regular taxi fare or school bus fees will quickly add up. In addition to that, there is also the cost of what to do with the kids after school.

While non-working mums may shell out for after school clubs such as ballet, musical instrument lessons or extra tuition, working parents may hire the services of nurseries or nannies to care for their offspring after hours. It’s a series of costs that can see some parents spending thousands of dirhams on top of the standard fees.

Hala El Khoury, 29, from Lebanon, estimates she spends an extra Dh15,000 on her four-year-old daughter’s education on top of the Dh23,400 she already spends on fees.

This could double when her seven-month-old son joins her daughter at one of the Dubai schools.  While the extra amount is not a surprise to her, she does feel it is “too much”.

Three years later, the brand has managed to maintain a strong pace of launching a new branch every three to four months. Farah George, Food & Beverage general manager at AKI, tells Kipp that the plans is to have 20 branches by 2018.

“In fact, if it weren’t for landlord-related delays, we would have had 15 by the end of this year,” he says. “Our next opening in Dubai will be on Sheikh Zayed Road at the end of June and our first ‘drive-thru’ location on Beach Road, the first week of August.”

The retail market is extremely competitive in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and international brands are very aware of this –but it is really having the right retail space that remains the biggest challenge for brands, according to George. So far, BF is the largest gourmet burger chain in the country (by store count) but finding the right location, in the right area, and the right size that ‘fits,’ isn’t always easy. “If you get the positioning wrong by a number of metres, you could really lose a lot of business,” he says.

Click to to watch the brief video interview

According to the 2013 edition of ‘How global is the business of retail’ by leading global property adviser CBRE, Dubai’s retail market is significantly ahead of other major cities around the world. The emirate has maintained its position as the second most important retail destination, closely behind London.

As far as AKI is concerned, launching and operating companies here is much easier than other countries. Financially speaking, Dubai makes perfect sense and most brands succeed here because the cost of operating is cheaper than other countries – particularly in the labour department. Rents might be slightly higher, but other overhead costs are generally lower. “If you’re operating successfully in Dubai, you can make a great return,” he says.

When Kipp pressed George on who BurgerFuel views as competition or a threat, he emphasises on a common misconception that since they’re a burger restaurant, their main competition would naturally be other burger places as well, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. After all, customers don’t normally eat burgers every day. They don’t eat Pizza or ‘Manakish’ every day either. They choose every day.

“Basically, you’re just as likely to end up competing with an Arabic restaurant and so I’d feel perfectly comfortable opening a BurgerFuel branch right next to another burger joint.” When all that’s said and done, customers look for quality, convenience and value for money, and many brands in the UAE offer exactly that.

*Photo Credit

With two key prepaid products on offer, the LOADnSHOP and MyNetCard users can recharge these cards at more than 400 locations across the UAE with 24/7 access in some locations.

The LOADnSHOP functions similar to a credit card, and can be reloaded with funds. The MyNetCard is a one-time use prepaid card for online shopping and entertainment.

Prepaid cards have been one of the fastest growing industries in the Middle East, with revenue from prepaid sales in the UAE alone expected to reach $18.4 billion by 2015.

“Prepaid cards are the new generation of shopping for this region, and Majid Al Futtaim Finance is amongst the pioneers of the industry in the UAE,” said Rasool Hujair, CEO of Majid Al Futtaim Finance.

The civil aviation union Hava-Is, which represents 14,000 of the carrier’s 15,800 workers, responded by saying its week-long industrial action would continue.

Turkish Airlines, Europe’s fourth-largest airline by passengers, said it will increase wages by a cumulative 8.1 percent in 2013 and 6.1 percent in 2014 after contract talks with Hava-Is broke down.

Earlier on Wednesday, Hava-Is proposed a wage increase of 10 percent for this year, less than its initial demands. It is also seeking the reinstatement of 305 workers who were fired over a one-day walkout last May.

“With this decision, the collective contract negotiations, and what has happened in connection with them, are no longer on Turkish Airlines’ agenda,” the Istanbul-based carrier said in an emailed statement, referring to the strike.

The airline said there have been no flight disruptions because most personnel had disregarded the union’s decision to strike on May 15 and accused Hava-Is of abuse of its authority.

However, Atilay Aycin, president of Hava-Is, said about 2,500 workers had joined the strike and that Turkish Airlines was consolidating flights in order to avoid cancellations and hiring temporary staff to maintain personnel numbers.

“It is illegal for management to unilaterally end collective bargaining … We have pared our demands to end this dispute but our proposals were not accepted and so the strike continues,” Aycin said.

It first surfaced last year as “human betacoronavirus 2c EMC”, but the suffixes “2c England-Qatar, “2C Jordan-N3″, “England 1″ have also appeared and many scientists have resorted to “novel coronavirus” – new crown-shaped virus – instead.

While the World Health Organisation (WHO) says the virus and the severe infections and deaths it has caused are “alarming” and need to be tracked, none of its names is especially helpful.

“A virus is only ‘novel’ until the next one comes around,” Raoul de Groot, head of the Coronavirus Study Group (CSG), said of the catchiest of the titles it has acquired so far.

So with the death toll from the 42 cases identified at 21 and expected to rise – de Groot’s group has come up with a new name: “Middle East Respiratory Syndrome” or MERS, since all the cases have had a direct or indirect connection to the region.

The CSG, which published the name in the Journal of Virology last week, said it had been endorsed by the Saudi, Dutch and British scientists who discovered it, the WHO’s European office and the Saudi health ministry.

But naming deadly new viruses is fraught with sensitivity, and the signs are this matter has yet to settle.

DIFFICULT HISTORY

Human disease is littered with examples of fractious, sometimes furious rows over what emerging pathogens are called.

Some 30 years ago, when the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, was discovered, it was named “GRID”, or “gay-related immune deficiency”, helping to spread the slur “the gay plague”.

It was not until it became clear the sexually transmitted virus was also infecting heterosexuals and haemophiliacs, that GRID was replaced with the more accurate HIV.

More recently, the scientific “H1N1″ was the name that stuck for the pandemic flu strain that swept the world in 2009/2010 after earlier suggestions proved too sensitive.

An Israeli health minister objected to “swine flu” on religious grounds and “Mexican flu” caused offence to a nation.

When scientists called a “superbug” enzyme that makes bacteria resistant to almost all known antibiotics “New Delhi metallo beta lactamase”, or NDM-1, the Indian health ministry called it “malicious propaganda” to put India in the name.

“Clearly, naming viruses and diseases after ethnicity, religion, gender and lifestyle is potentially stigmatising and offensive, and thus unacceptable,” de Groot said.

“All parties involved were acutely aware of sensitivities around geographic naming and the issue has been weighed very carefully,” he told Reuters via email.

The MERS decision involved Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands, Maria Zambon of the UK Health Protection Agency and Ali Mohamed Zaki, an Egyptian microbiologist working at the Dr Soliman Fakeeh Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, among others.

All of them played key roles in discovering the new virus.

According to a source close to the discussions, who declined to be identified due to sensitivities surrounding the issue, one suggestion was to name the virus after Zaki as a tribute to his work; he lost his job after going public with his findings.

It is early days, but so far, MERS has not caught on, despite the WHO’s European branch saying “the WHO and other committee members strongly urge the use of this name in scientific and other communications”.

A “disease outbreak update” issued from the WHO’s global headquarters in Geneva on Wednesday referred to the “novel coronavirus” or “nCoV” throughout. MERS did not get a mention.

A WHO spokesman said he was unable to comment on the discrepancy but added that from now on “we are going to be using the new name in all our updates”.

The ‘world’s most luxurious’ hotel has introduced its personalised range of the 24-carat gold devices to guests upon check-in, to be returned upon check-out, and priced – according to The Guardian – at Dh37,600 (£6,715). Engraved especially with the hotel’s logo, guests will use the device as a “virtual concierge” and access both information and a selection of hotel services.

“Our exclusive Burj Al Arab 24-carat gold iPads epitomise Jumeirah’s philosophy of ‘stay different’ and further enhances our guests’ experience during their stay”, says Heinrich Morio, Burj Al Arab’s general manager. “We have also recently introduced iMacs inside all of our suites to ensure that we offer thoroughly modern guest experiences and keep up with hospitality industry trends.”

Interestingly, the gold iPad – described by Burj Al Arab as the “ultimate in luxury accessories” – is a way of differentiating itself from the competition. Hold on, let’s make sure we didn’t read that incorrectly. Excuse us while we silently count the hundreds of other factors that – without the need for a gold iPad or other needlessly embellished objects – make it stand out.

For one, despite the Burj Al Arab officially falling under the five-star category, it’s frequently thought of – and constantly referred to – as the world’s only seven-star hotel. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s been designed to mimic a ship’s sail. Never mind the fact that it is the world’s fourth-tallest hotel and stands on a 280-metre artificial island, and caters to the elite members of society.

While Kipp sees this gold iPad as the epitome of luxury offering in Dubai, we must admit it isn’t necessarily always about maintaining an opulent lifestyle for the guests. After all, it isn’t the first time a customised version of the iPad was introduced by the hotel. Back in October 2012, it premiered its exclusive 24-carat rose gold iPad as part of its Pinking Burj Al Arab campaign in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Experts and web users say they believe the Internet obstacles are related to the June 14 presidential vote, the first since 2009 polls in which accusations of fraud – denied by the government – kindled months of protests organised in part via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Iranian officials denied any connection between the Internet disruptions and the upcoming vote. But, after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad four years ago, they are wary of the possibility of further unrest this time around.

The last-minute entries of moderate former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad allyEsfandiar Rahim Mashaie have shaken up what was expected to be a limited race between hardline conservatives close to clerical Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and hostile to Ahmadinejad.

The populist Ahmadinejad, who has fallen out with Khamenei, is limited by law to two consecutive presidential terms.

Iran’s Guardian Council was due to present a final list of approved candidates to the Interior Ministry on Tuesday. The ministry then has two days to announce the approved names.

The opposition website Kaleme reported on Monday that security had been heightened in Tehran, apparently to counter any protests should the candidacies of Rafsanjani or Mashaie be rejected by the council.

Iranian web users, who number some 45 million according to official figures, have grappled with increased obstacles to using the Internet since the 2009 election.

Kaleme said on Monday Internet speeds had dropped in much of Tehran and that in some parts of the capital, accessing the Web had become impossible – which would prevent dissidents from mustering protests online as they did after the 2009 vote.

Hamed, 33, a dissident freelance journalist living in Tehran, said his clients now have resorted to sending him files by loading them onto CDs and transporting them by courier.

“We get things done but with more time spent,” Hamed told Reuters via email.

Sheikh Mohamed became CEO in October 2011, having previously served as deputy chairman. He replaced long-serving Peter Kaliaropoulos, who became Group Chief Executive Officer for Strategic Assignments.

Batelco has now appointed Kaliaropoulos as chief operating officer and he, along with a three-person committee, will lead the telecom operator until a new CEO is hired, it said in an emailed statement on Tuesday. The committee is comprised of three members of the company’s board.

Sheikh Mohamed has left the company with immediate effect. Batelco did not give a reason for his departure, but he was unable to halt a profit slump that the company largely blamed on tougher competition at home.

It competes with units of Kuwait’s Zain and Saudi Telecom Co as well as about 10 internet providers.

Batelco, majority government-owned, has reported declining profits in 11 of the past 12 quarters, with 2012 net profit down 22.2 percent from a year earlier.

The slump has pushed the group to expand abroad and in April it concluded a deal to buy Cable & Wireless Communications’ Monaco and Islands Division, putting Batelco in 10 new markets. It also owns Jordanian telecoms operator Umniah, 27 percent of Yemeni mobile operator Sabafon and minority stakes in internet providers in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Photo Credit

Qatar no longer holds the balance of power when needy banks come seeking equity. The terms of recent investments by the country’s sovereign wealth fund in Russia’s VTB and Germany’s Deutsche Bank suggest that the emirate can no longer extract unusually favourable terms.

Five years ago, a global capital freeze meant cash-rich Qatar could make Barclays and Credit Suisse offer equity at a big discount or hybrid debt with double-digit coupons. True, investing in financial firms in the midst of a historic crisis was risky. All the same, the juicy terms made it easier for Qatar to enjoy outsize returns.

Today it’s a different story. Equity investors are looking for cheap entry points back into the market rally. Qatar isn’t in need as a capital provider of last resort. So there were no bells and whistles with its latest investments. Of the $3.3 billion issue by VTB, the emirate is expected to be allocated shares worth around $500 million, and at the same 10 percent discount offered to existing shareholders as well as sovereign funds from Norway andAzerbaijan.

The careful stage management of Deutsche’s recent 3 billion euros placing presented even less scope for Qatar to bag a big bargain. The new shares were sold at close to the prevailing market price. Qatar picked up at least 100 million euros of the issue, the Financial Times reported. The days when it would bank roll entire offerings may have passed.

Qatar can expect lower returns from its new investments, although they also involve less risk. As a sovereign buyer, part of Qatar’s return from VTB may be political. A closer relationship with Moscow wouldn’t hurt Doha’s foreign policy goals. The two are at odds over how to resolve the situation in Syria. China used its 2011 investment in VTB as a platform to co-invest with the bank in potash miner Uralkali and gold miner Polyus – albeit with mixed success.

Qatar needs to find a home for billions of dollars raised from gas exports each year. Regulation disincentivising banks from investing in each other gives the emirate some advantages. But it is no longer the only answer to the financial sector’s needs.

Morocco wants to be one of the first African countries to get the fourth generation (4G) telecom services, the statement said.

“We will launch the tenders to award 4G licenses by the end of the year, and the opening of the service is expected in 2014″ Azdine El Mountassir Billah, the head of ANRT said, quoted by MAP. “It is not a luxury, it is a must,” he added.

The Morocco’s telecom watchdog had originally planned to sell at least one 4G license in the fourth quarter of the last year, but El Mountassir Billah has not given any reasons for the delay.

Morocco’s telecommunications market is dominated by Vivendi’s Maroc Telecom, which is being sold, France Telecom affiliate Medi Telecom, and Inwi, owned by a holding company controlled by the Moroccan monarchy and Kuwait’s Zain.

Mobile phone penetration hovers around 115 percent of Morocco’s 34 million population, and the country had 4 million Internet subscribers by the end of March 2013, up 24.35 percent from the previous year, the statement said.

“This unwarranted stoppage had been instigated by a minority group who will be held accountable for their actions,” United Arab Emirates’ largest publicly-listed construction firm said in a statement on Dubai’s bourse.

The firm said all workers had returned to work with no impact on any of its projects.

Thousands of workers employed by Arabtec have stayed away from work from Saturday to back wage demands, a rare labour protest in the Gulf emirate, where trade unions are banned.

Police were called into Arabtec labour accommodations on Monday after labourers refused to report to work.

The workers were demanding a wage hike of about $50 a month.

UAE-based telecommunications operator Etisalat today launched its first global corporate social responsibility and sustainability report to highlight activities across its 15 operating countries.

Entitled “Etisalat CSR & Sustainability Report 2012,” the report was released at The Institute for International Research (IIR) 10^th CSR Summit, held today in Dubai. The heads of CSR departments from Etisalat’s operations in Afghanistan, Benin, Gabon, Egypt, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Togo and the UAE all presented their latest projects.

Etisalat Egypt included the initiative “Origin”, a project to secure drinking water in 19 governorates to date.

Other African countries, such as Togo, have had aid contributions split between education and health, while Nigeria received aid through its annual Merit Awards Scheme – an educational scholarship program that focuses on undergraduate students of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Computer Science, and Business Management courses.

The aid to Afghanistan included the distribution of more than 3,000 food packages in Kabul during the holy month of Ramadan.

Benin received supplies for elementary school students and the provision of seating and tables for nine colleges. Additionally, the company has supported the Ministry of Health in Benin through blood donations.

The telecommunications company also provided assistance to both Sri Lanka and Pakistan for water projects, sanitation aid, education, as well as aid to orphans.

During the conference, which was also sponsored by Etisalat, the telco group exhibited its high impact projects, including Mobile Baby (Tanzania), Emirates Energy Star (UAE) and the Etisalat Foundation (Egypt).

He cited Singapore’s currency regime as an example that Gulf states could adopt.

Gulf Arab monarchies embraced fixed exchange rate regimes to stabilise their currencies and import low inflation from overseas. But their economic cycles have diverged from the United States in recent years as Asiabecame the Gulf’s dominant trade partner.

“We in the GCC need more than an outdated four-decade old simple uni-instrument, uni-tool macroeconomic policy framework,” Khalid Alkhater, Central Bank (QCB) Director of Research and Monetary Policy, said in a prepared speech seen by Reuters.

“This framework was suitable for the earlier stages of development. However, the world has changed,” said Alkhater, who has recently completed a scientific research study on the topic, adding it did not necessarily reflect the QCB’s official view.

Alkhater is due to speak at the Doha Forum later on Tuesday.

Any change to currency pegs to the dollar would be a sensitive issue in the Gulf Arab region, which has strong political and economic ties with the United States. Comments diverging from the official line are very rare.

Qatar adopted a currency peg after gaining independence from Britain in 1971. It has kept the riyal pegged at 3.64 riyals to the dollar since 2001, when it replaced pegging it to special drawing rights (SDR) used in 1975-2001.

A more active monetary policy may now be needed as Qatar plans to spend $140 billion on infrastructure, partly to prepare for hosting the 2022 World Cup soccer tournament.

As the World Cup draws closer, Qatar’s fiscal spending, its only policy tool, may become difficult to restrict due to the tournament building commitments and pre-planned diversification programmes, Alkhater said.

“We could potentially face a threat of a buildup of inflationary pressures over the next 10 years. Hence, we need additional macroeconomic stabilization instruments, namely monetary policy and exchange rate,” Alkhater said.

Inflation in Qatar climbed to 3.7 percent on an annual basis in April, the highest level since at least 2009, fuelled by rising rental costs. Bank credit expanded by 32 percent on average last year, the fastest rate since the global crisis started in 2007/8.

The walkout by the workers, who provide security, fire protection and health services for oil firms, began on Sunday but had not affected oil production in the OPEC member state, union official Saad al-Sebayie said.

Well over 1,000 of around 1,400 staff at Oil Sector Services Co. (OSSC), owned by Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, have been gathering in a union building instead of turning up for work, he said. OSSC was not immediately available for comment.

The workers were asking for their jobs to be moved to a higher pay bracket, Sebayie said. The union had warned state oil companies of the planned action in advance, he added.

Policymakers and economists have warned that steep growth in public sector salaries is unsustainable in the long-term in a country where over 80 percent of nationals work for the state.

After the cabinet agreed a 25 percent pay rise for state employees in March last year, customs workers responded by going on strike for even bigger hikes. They were joined by workers at state-run Kuwait Airways, whose walkout grounded flights.

Strikes are fairly common among public sector workers in Kuwait, one of the world’s richest countries per capita, whereas industrial action is rare in other Gulf states like the United Arab Emirares, where unions are banned.

The Gulf Arab state’s fifth-largest lender by market value had said in January it would hike its paid-up capital by 50 percent, split equally between a local rights issue and a sale of global depositary receipts (GDRs) in London.

While the $426 million local cash call was completed in March, the expected GDR issue, which was due to be managed by JP Morgan Chase, has yet to materialise.

“The second part, we have multiple options. We can go for a GDR or for hybrid debt that is validated for Tier 1, or for a rights issue again to shareholders,” R. Seetharaman, the bank’s CEO, told reporters at an event in Dubai on Tuesday.

Hybrid debt could include perpetual bonds, whose lack of a maturity means they can count as equity and, therefore, towards a bank’s capital ratio.

“All these options are being contemplated and hopefully we should be in a position to resolve this during this year,” he said, adding the bank’s Tier 1 capital ratio was already above 15 percent after the local rights issue.

Hybrid debt instruments which boost Tier 1 capital – a key measure of a bank’s financial health – are becoming increasing popular in the Gulf, given their competitive costs and the fact they diversify the investor base away from local shareholders.

Dubai’s largest lender, Emirates NBD, is meeting investors ahead of a possible Tier 1 bond, while Abu DhabiIslamic Bank and Dubai Islamic Bank have both completed sharia-compliant Tier 1 sukuk in recent months.

Commercial Bank of Qatar has also picked banks to arrange a deal, sources said last month.

In terms of a regular bond issue, Seetharaman said the bank could “possibly” return to the market next year. The bank completed a $500 million five-year offering in March 2012.

Qatari banks have begun looking outside of the Gulf region for acquisition opportunities - Qatar National Bank and CBQ have bought businesses in Egypt and Turkey respectively – and Seetharaman said last month Doha Bank would look to double its foreign profits to 15 percent of the total by 2015.

However, Seetharaman said on Tuesday it had no acquisition targets and was focused on regional growth, planning to launch corporate- and project-finance operations in the United Arab Emirates.

In the UAE, 5 billion dirhams ($1.4 billion) has been earmarked for distribution in the next eight months as part of a $12 billion allocation to high-potential clients in the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar.

After days of rumours and user-driven panic about where the service is heading, the search engine giant has confirmed its purchase of the New York-based blogger site, and after a track record of ‘mismanaged’ acquisitions, such as Flickr, the chief promises not to screw things up this time around. In fact, both she and 26-year-old CEO of Tumblr, David Karp, have made several promises to ‘allay’ any concerns users may have.

“We’re not turning purple. Our HQ [office] isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission – to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve – certainly isn’t changing,” writes Karp in his celebratory post. “So what’s new? Simply, Tumblr gets better and faster. The work ahead of us remains the same – and we still have a long way to go – but with more resources to draw from.”

As for Mayer, along with inserting a quirky GIF and the aforementioned ‘We promise not to screw it up’, she vows to run Tumblr independently and help it become even better and faster.

“We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going on,” she writes in a recent blog post. “We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO. The product roadmap, the team, wit and irreverence will all remain the same, as will the mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve.”

As far as working together goes, Mayer adds that Tumblr can deploy Yahoo’s personalisation technology and search infrastructure to help users discover creators, bloggers and content they’ll love. “In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo’s media network and search experiences. The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience,” she writes.

For those of you out there who are still cynical about this long-term partnership – then allow Kipp to quote another sentence from David Karp’s post; perhaps the quirkiest one of all: “We also share a vision for Tumblr’s business that doesn’t compromise the community and the product we love. Plus, both our logos end with punctuation.”

Tumblr. and Yahoo! – now if that doesn’t convince you, nothing will.

*Photo Credit

“Even organizations which are diligent in their security measures realize that breaches are entirely too likely in the face of modern threats and they need solutions that help them deal with malware before, during and after an attack,” said Martin Roesch, Sourcefire founder and CTO. “The enhanced trajectory features in our Advanced Malware Protection portfolio provide customers with decisive insight when a breach occurs and extend Sourcefire’s innovative Retrospective Security with the ability to immediately locate and eradicate malicious files everywhere they surface.”

With Sourcefire’s new Network File Trajectory and Device Trajectory capabilities, customers can quickly determine the scope of an outbreak and track malware or suspicious files across the network and at the system level. These new features enable security personnel to quickly locate malware point-of-entry, propagation and behavior. This is an innovative component of Sourcefire’s revolutionary Retrospective Security, which allows organizations to quickly identify, scope, track, investigate and remediate malware, even when malicious files are originally deemed “safe” or “unknown.”

Network File Trajectory delivers the ability to track malware across the network, providing detailed information on point of entry, propagation, protocols used, and which users or endpoints are involved. This is available as part of Sourcefire’s Advanced Malware Protection for FirePOWER™ software license, a subscription that can be added to a Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention Systems (NGIPS) or Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW), or as a dedicated appliance, both of which provide advanced malware protection for networks.

Device Trajectory builds upon existing endpoint File Trajectory capabilities to deliver critical analysis of system level activities, file origination and file relationships for root cause and forensic analysis to track and pinpoint behaviors indicating a compromise has happened and a breach has most likely occurred. Device Trajectory is available as part of the FireAMP™ host-based protection available for endpoints and virtual networks.

Sourcefire is further enhancing FireAMP with new Indicators of Compromise and Device Flow Correlation capabilities, which enable users to correlate seemingly benign and unrelated events, while also monitoring device activity and communications to uncover potential malware.

Indicators of Compromise (IoC) – Correlates malware intelligence and even seemingly benign events to determine whether a system may have been compromised  – providing users with a prioritized list of potentially compromised devices.

Device Flow Correlation – Correlation of activities on an endpoint with traffic on the network, providing integrated intelligence and automation across the advanced malware protection security infrastructure. This provides distinct advantages in controlling malware proliferation on endpoints outside the protections of a corporate network, like remote or mobile workers.

In addition, the trajectory and IoC features leverage the captured network activity to accelerate investigation and compromise prioritization.

Visit the Advanced Malware Protection section on Sourcefire.com for more information.

About Sourcefire

Sourcefire, Inc. (Nasdaq:FIRE), a world leader in intelligent cybersecurity solutions, is transforming the way global large- to mid-size organizations and government agencies manage and minimize security risks to their dynamic networks, endpoints, mobile devices and virtual environments. With solutions from a next-generation network security platform to advanced malware protection, Sourcefire’s threat-centric approach provides customers with Agile Security^® that delivers protection before, during and after an attack. Trusted for more than 10 years, Sourcefire has earned a reputation for innovation, consistent security effectiveness and world-class research all focused on detecting, understanding and stopping threats. For more information about Sourcefire, please visit www.sourcefire.com.

Sourcefire, the Sourcefire logo, Snort, the Snort and Pig logo, Agile Security and the Agile Security logo, ClamAV, FireAMP, FirePOWER, FireSIGHT and certain other trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sourcefire, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

#          #          #

For further information, please contact:

Nirmala Dsouza

OAK Consulting FZ LLC

+971507343840

nimi@oakconsulting.biz

Starcom MediaVest Group wins Yas Marina Circuit account

Dubai, UAE, 21 May 2013: Leading media agency Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) has been appointed by Yas Marina Circuit – the center for motorsport excellence in the Middle East and official home of the Formula 1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – as its media agency. Effective immediately, the three-year contract covers Yas Marina Circuit’s full scope of business including global assignments. The win is set to see SMG deliver multi-layered and integrated communications solutions for the brand – spanning digital and analog media formats – across all platforms and channels.

The account was won following a competitive, multi-agency and multi-phased pitch process that first began in December 2012. SMG’s response to the Request For Proposal (RFP) – for the Meetings Incentives Conferences & Events (MICE) brief – was submitted in January 2013 and featured both commercial and technical submissions.

In effect, although the account was previously split across two media agencies, SMG’s full-service communications approach has enabled Yas Marina Circuit to finally consolidate its entire business – which includes MICE as well as retail and community initiatives such as the Formula 1, Sustaintable Motorsport Events (including Drift, Drag and Yas Racing Series), Yas Drag Racing Centre, Yas Racing School, Yas Kartzone, Yas Central, F1 in Schools Presented by Mubadala, Train Yas by Activelife, Walk2013, ADNIC Yas Run, Cycle Yas, Tri Yas and GoYas – into one media group.

Indeed, SMG’s win can be attributed to the agency’s remarkable ideation strategy, high levels of professionalism and vast understanding of the Yas Marina Circuit brand – all of which was starkly evident during the pitch process.

“We are delighted that Yas Marina Circuit – one of the world’s most technologically advanced circuits and a true emblem of motorsports success here in the Middle East – has chosen SMG as its media agency,” said Alain Brahamcha, General Manager, Starcom Dubai. “This high profile win marks a significant milestone for us and serves as a testament to our trusted reputation for excellence, stellar team dynamic and unyielding passion for creating innovative work. We are absolutely thrilled about this new partnership and look forward to the great possibilities ahead.”

Nick McElwee, Sales & Marketing Director, Yas Marina Circuit, echoed that statement, adding: “Along with the media landscape, our own business has changed tremendously in the past three years. We pride ourselves on being business driven and are delighted to be working with SMG, both as a media partner and a business partner.”

–Ends–

Taste of Lebanon

Dubai, UAE – May 21, 2013 – Residents living in Jumeirah and the surrounding areas close to Umm Suqiem and Al Quoz are now able to shop a little closer to home with the opening of the two latest organic food stores in the UAE market.

Store Concept

Customers visiting new Roastery & Sweet stores will enjoy an exciting assortment of very special offerings. These include an abundance of fresh and organic produce and full meat department featuring the highest quality of meats. The store is conveniently located on Sheikh Zayed road (next door to the Reem Al Bawadi Restaurant and Cafe) and Jumeirah beach road (inside the Reem al Bawadi Restaurants and Cafe).

The concept and the arrangement of the shop floor is very unique unlike other stores on the high street or shopping mall. The majority of the products are organic and mainly sourced from Lebanon. The outlet is becoming very popular in the Jumeirah area. The store offers a tremendous variety in Jams, sweets, coffee beans, teas, pickles, spices, olives, olive oil, honey, dates, dry fruits, rice, lentil, flour, natural juices, fruit syrups  and Australian imported meat. All items are well merchandised and presented in the store, and shoppers can be sure that they are getting the premium quality products along with competitive prices.

Manager’s View

I’m excited about the opportunity I have been given to open the first two stores of its Kind in Jumeirah area, said Mr. Nehme , store manager. We are excited and we are ready. We have been working very hard to get the store ready for our customers, we have carefully selected natural and organic food products from the best suppliers in Lebanon.

There is a strong demand for Lebanese herbs and spices here in Dubai. Some unique Lebanese spices are hard to find in some part of the city. Spices and herbs are the foundation of any delicious Lebanese meal. In fact, the spices are what makes Lebanese food so unique!. In this new outlet you will find the herbs and spices in the freshest form. People are visiting from different parts of the Dubai to buy seven spices, hamburger spice, kafta spice, falafel spice, frikeh, moghrabieh, dried jew’s mallows etc.

Our Jam section contains a variety of exotic jams. Our fruit products are picked by hand in Lebanon and made in small batches to preserve the quality and flavor. We make sure that only the finest fruit goes into each batch of jams. We do not use artificial flavoring, fillers, or artificial color.

We offer fresh and authentic Lebanese sweets in our outlet. The ingredients are fresh, and many items are prepared on a daily basis to guarantee freshness.  Many patrons have commented that our products taste like “momma used to make.”

Timings & Locations

The Roastery & Sweet is open 7 days a week and has parking available for the convenience of shoppers.

Branch 1 (6am to 3am)

Jumeirah beach road (inside the Reem Al Bawadi)

Tell: 043947444

Branch 2 (5.30am to 3am)

Sheikh Zayed road (next door to the Reem Al Bawadi al Manara branch)

Tell: 043284440

About the store

The store  provides a one-of-a-kind shopping experience, extensive product range and developed from research in core markets to express the vibrant, exciting and diverse tastes and colors. Our store offers outstanding value, quality and variety. The store was launched in April  2013 in al Manara and Jumeirah area. For more information please call on: 043284440

Contact:

Mahroz aftab

mahroz@reemalbawadi.com

This year, and more specifically since Saturday, ‘thousands’ of workers went on a two-day strike – involving employees in Dubai and Abu Dhabi refusing to leave their accommodation premises. According to most reports, Arabtec’s workers earn between Dh650 to Dh1200 per month and they’re requesting for an additional Dh250 a month to help support their families back home.

In an official statement, Arabtec said they are working with the Ministry of Labour and police to resolve the situation “as quickly as possible”, yet there are mixed reports concerning the latest situation.

Gulf News has reported that on Tuesday, workers returned back to their normal routine after being promised their issues will be looked into, if not completely resolved. On the other hand, today’s report by 7days suggests an almost entirely different scenario.

Workers told the local paper that they vowed to continue this strike until their demands are met. One worker said that he, along with several of his colleagues, plan on having a meeting with the supervisor and listening to what he has to say. “If we do not get our increase the strike will continue,” he added. Other reports suggest that their demands were rejected and the workers had no choice but to return to work.

The argument of the workers’ wages being low, according to the report, is that meals are provided. The counterargument, according to several workers, is that they’d rather have more money to send home then have meals provided for them.

The company promises its projects delivery schedule will not be affected by the action and that the labour dispute will be resolved as soon as possible, but yet – according to Reuters – two employees said other workers continue to observe the stoppage and no promises on wage hikes have been made.

Forward-thinking digital strategist brings over 10 years of experience to appointment

Dubai, May 20, 2013 – Starcom MediaVest Group today announced that Rayan Karaky has been appointed Chief Digital Officer, MENA and Emerging Markets. In this new expanded role, Karaky will continue to report to John Antoniades, CEO, MENA and will also report to Matt Blackborn, President, Emerging Markets and he will continue to be based in Dubai.

“As in other parts of the world, digital strategy and innovation is driving growth across the Emerging Markets,” said Blackborn. “Rayan brings with him tremendous knowledge and a proven track record of brand building and aggressive growth in the digital space. He is a true innovator, and I’m looking forward to working closely with him.”

As Chief Digital Officer, MENA and Emerging Markets, Karaky will drive the advancement of digital growth, competency, integration and innovation within the SMG Global Network and specifically across SMG’s Emerging Markets. He will partner closely with SMG’s President, Digital, Data and Analytics, Lisa Weinstein, to develop and implement new digital media models, platforms, services, partnerships, revenue streams and required skill sets in the Emerging Markets. Among the responsibilities he will be tasked with, Karaky will champion the SMG Human Experience Vision and drive towards an objective to derive 50% of revenue from digital, content, Data & Analytics in Emerging Markets.  He will also lead digital adoption and growth on SMG’s global network clients in Emerging Markets by developing customized structured plans for digital, deploying the company’s proprietary suite of products including Audience on Demand, ECHO, Connected Intelligence, POEM, Pathfinder, Agile Marketing and Discoverability Index.

“Digital convergence is reshaping our industry on a daily basis.  I’m tremendously grateful to Matt for the opportunity to use my expertise in adopting new capabilities and driving integration across a wider geography,” said Karaky.

Karaky was most recently Chief Digital Officer, Vivaki MENA where he focused his efforts on developing the group’s existing structures, working closely with regional leadership in order to further build capabilities. Prior to that, he was General Manager of VivaKi Digital Operations, where he oversaw a wide range of key accounts including Orbit Showtime Network, MasterCard, GM, Kellogg’s, Richemont, ASPIRE and Emirates Airline, further propelling each brand into the digital age.

Karaky is responsible for growing the digital talent from 3 to over 90 employees in six years, catapulting the digital division from a #6 ranking to #1 in the MENA region. Under Karaky and his team’s leadership, Starcom MediaVest Group garnered multiple awards and accolades, reinforcing its leadership position in the market.

Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) won the coveted Media Agency of the Year title at the seventh annual Dubai Lynx Awards, which took place on 13 March, 2013. The win, which marks the third time in the span of five years that SMG MENA garners this prestigious accolade, further cements the group’s status as the top media buying and planning network in the Middle East.  Additionally, Forrester Research named SMG a leader in “New Interactive Landscape,” making SMG the first media agency to receive this digital recognition.

FOR PERSONALIZED MENSWEAR IN THE UAE

Italy’s premier fashion house Canali, will be hosting an exclusive “SU MISURA” event at The Dubai Mall and Mall of the Emirates Canali stores from 24-25 May.

A master tailor of Canali will be visiting Dubai as part of their global visit to cater to customers

interested in getting suits, jackets and coats tailored to their specifications.

Commenting on the made to measure concept – Mr. Ahmed Sankari, Vice President of Paris Group

International which holds the exclusive franchise rights for Canali in the UAE, said that as more

fashion-conscious men in the region are discovering the luxury, quality and impeccable classic style

of tailoring, the demand to supply becomes a part of the Canali’s trademark.

Says Mr. Sankari, “Canali’s products have always been of the highest quality, and its unique style

transcends fashion itself, remaining sophisticated yet contemporary. We are confident that Canali

will succeed to complement the tastes of the sophisticated and bring forth a new dimension in the

fashion region.”

By appointment made only, we will start with the clients body measurements, taken exclusively by

our specialist. We will also incorporate the client’s stylistic preferences, as well as to take care of all

the individualistic aspects and the finest details, from the type of stitching, to pocket inclination, form

of internal pockets and personalized embroidering.

Each “SU MISURA” customer has his own paper pattern which allows him to order new suits simply

by choosing from a selection of over 600 patterns without the need for repeated visits and lengthy

fittings.

Impeccable cuts and a wide range of fabrics to choose from have made the Canali brand stand out

amongst the rest for its perfectionism and quality. The best of fabrics are used ranging from the finest

cashmere, vicuña and silk blends.

Canali boutiques offer tailored quality suits, jackets and overcoats and the Canali range which

encompasses shirts, ties, sportswear, suede and leather goods, all of which contribute to make up the

most distinguished look for men who associate with timeless style and modern elegance

Contact us;

CANALI Mall of the Emirates

Tel: +971 4 3951124 | Email: canalimoe@parisgroup.ae

CANALI The Dubai Mall

Tel: +971 4 3308334 | Email: canalidm@parisgroup.ae

Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme is a professional SSD designed for business and advanced users who demand high performance, reliability, and true data integrity which come in three different capacities like 128GB,    256GB     and 512GB.

The drive is powered by True Speed technology that efficiently clean up the dirty blocks by constantly operating in the background to pick up blocks, erase the unwanted pages and move data to deliver a constant speed with high performance.

It uses the combination of the latest Marvell 88SS9187 controller and the best quality Japanese Toshiba Toggle NAND flash creates M5Pro with enterprise-class performance. It has the ability to consistently deliver random read / write speeds up to 100,000/88,000 IOPS and sequential read / write speeds up to 540 / 470 MB/s. This makes the M5Pro Xtreme suitable for use in a heavy workstation, server role, or Raid 0 configuration.

The M5 Pro Xtreme retains the features that define it as a true professional SSD; this includes a calculated mean time between failures of 2.4 million hours. This level of reliability has been achieved through extensive development, strict quality control, and a stringent pre-production testing requirement of 400 drives passing 500 hours of intensive tests with zero errors.

Bill Liu, Regional Manager-Channel Marketing & Sales Div., Plextor said, “M5 Pro Xtreme redefines professional standards for mean time between failures and data protection. This new 2.5” SATA SSD powered with new Plextor firmware makes the drive extremely fast, reliable and stable enhances performance to newer levels.”

The M5 Pro Xtreme also features Plextor True Protect unique enterprise-grade double-data protection technology. True Protect is a multi-layer system to ensure the highest level of data integrity, combining the latest 128-bit error correction built into the Marvell controller with Plextor’s exclusive firmware-based Robust Data Hold-out algorithm. True Protect’s other element is protection against data theft using 256-bit AES full-drive encryption for maximum confidentiality.

Price, Warranty and Availability: M5 Pro Xtreme SSD comes with a three-year warranty for all the three variants 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB capacities. The price for M5 Pro Xtreme SSD 128GB is USD 142, while 256GB is priced at USD 268 and 512GB for USD 464. Channel partners across the Middle East region including UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait among others can avail M5M SSD drives from FDC International, the authorised distributor for Plextor in the region.

About Plextor
Plextor is a world-leading developer of solid-state drives, Blu-ray optical disc drives, and other high-performance digital storage devices for professionals, consumers, and enterprises. Since the company launched its first CD-ROM drive in 1989, Plextor’s prestigious multi–award-winning products have set the standard for quality and high performance. Plextor will continue to deliver new generations of products based on our core values of market-leading innovation, unequalled quality, complete service, and our belief that users should have full confidence in the performance and stability of the equipment we supply. The Plextor brand of storage and multimedia products is owned by Shinano Kenshi of Japan.

The DFNI awards are a celebration of the very best in the duty free industry in the Asia/Pacific Region and are based on votes received from industry partners.

Online voting forms for the DFNI Asia Pacific awards were sent to a special industry ‘academy’ of retailers, suppliers, agents and distributors serving the region. Forms were also distributed through the Duty Free News International database.

Accepting the award in Singapore, Colm McLoughlin, Executive Vice Chairman of Dubai Duty Free thanked H.H. Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority and Chairman of Dubai Duty Free for his continuing support and praised the efforts of the duty free team of employees.

“We are delighted to receive this recognition for the thirteenth time, the DFNI Awards are true industry honours and it is gratifying to know that Dubai Duty Free is consistently seen as the best in the business amongst our peers. We hope to retain this award for many years to come and I would like to thank all of those who voted for Dubai Duty Free.”

The DFNI award follows close on the heels of the Business Traveller Middle East Award for ‘Best Duty Free’ which was presented to Dubai Duty Free during the Arabian Travel Market in May.

Owner and curator Dadiba Pundole says the concept of Sovereign evolved from a multi-pronged mission. “Although it may be a while before Indian art truly comes of age, it has made great headway in recent years, and is a buzzword for international museums, auctioneers, and art collectors. It is also earning itself a sobriquet as an asset class of importance in investment portfolios. By conservative estimates, the Indian art market is currently valued at US$ 400 million – within a global art market that exceeds US$ 60 billion. The best way to look at these figures is to gauge, and then to harness the immense growth potential. At Sovereign, our aim is simply to make Indian art more available and accessible to collectors in the Middle East.”

Dadiba Pundole, a second-generation owner of one of India’s oldest art galleries, has also served in multiple international roles as curator, consultant, and valuator, and he sees impending prospects for Middle Eastern art, another key growth sector in the global art market. “In our second phase of operations, we will focus on introducing international collectors to artists from the region, especially Emirati talent.”

And finally, Sovereign will continue to help private, corporate and institutional art collectors in improving and increasing their art collections.

“For five decades, we have addressed the specific needs of banks, museums, and art aficionados – in sourcing or selling art to suit time, style, budget and occasion. We will continue this practice at Sovereign,” added Pundole.

Featuring a cool and contemporary space, Sovereign’s interiors are dotted with accents of colour and design. The launch of the gallery was also marked by its first exhibition – featuring six prominent works by six artists who are widely hailed as India’s finest. ‘Pioneers of Indian Modernism’ showcases MF Husain, VS Gaitonde, SH Raza, Tyeb Mehta, Ram Kumar and Akbar Padamsee, and will run until 30 June.

The roster of artists will change approximately every three months, and upcoming shows at the gallery include an exhibition of one of 21^st century India’s most important painters, and another by young artists from a UAE-based school.

Sovereign is located at The Palladium in Jumeirah Lakes Towers, and is open from 10.00 am to 1.00 pm, and 4.00 pm to 7.00 pm – every day except Friday. Private viewings can be arranged by appointment on Tel: 04 4322846, or by Email: info@sovereignfze.com

Interestingly enough, we haven’t been told what measures would be used to get the residents to actually leave, but a similar scheme is happening in Saudi Arabia as we speak. Currently, expats make up 68 per cent of Kuwait’s population – approximately 2.6 million.

Come June 1st, a medical segregation at public health facilities will be imposed – whereby only Kuwaiti patients will be treated in the morning, while all foreigners resort to evening consultations and visits. This particular ruling came after complaints in parliament of Kuwaiti patients having to ‘wait’ for treatment due to the large number of expatriates.

And thirdly, the gulf state has recently started deporting expat residents for traffic offences, including driving without a licence, using their cars to carry paying passengers, jumping a red light for the second time, or breaking the speed limit by more than 40 kilometres per hour. So far, over 1,200 expats have been shown the door since the month-old crackdown began and violators can be deported without an official court order. In a nutshell, Kuwait appears to be on a ‘deportation spree’.

It is already difficult enough for any foreigner to obtain a driver’s licence as – according to a now decade-old decision – one must hold a university degree, earn at least $1,400 a month and have lived in Kuwait for at least two years.

The Kuwait Society for Human Rights described the deportations as “oppressive” and urged the government to stop, as it “violates the basic principles of human rights” and could tarnish the state’s image – particularly at a time when its human rights record is already under scrutiny.

Do you believe imposing the minimum wage here is unfair to employers? Apparently, at a Federal National Council (FNC) session this week, an FNC member will argue that it is, in fact, unfair for Emiratis to have to abide by this minimum wage. According to The National, Hamad Al Rahoomi intends to ask Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, the UAE’s Foreign Minister, whether embassies should be allowed to ‘proactively ensure these minimums are upheld’.

Al Rahoomi says that many nationals have complained to him about this, saying maids should not be receiving a 100 per cent raise when they’re not doing any more work.

“This has been the situation for years. So we are surprised. If the two parties are happy, why change it?” asks Al Rahoomi. “This is taking advantage of UAE nationals,” he adds. “Some have started to draw up side contracts with maids to avoid minimum wages.”

As many of you probably know, minimum wages for domestic workers and maids have already been implemented in the United Arab Emirates. In November this year, more than 100 recruitment agencies have signed agreements with the Philippine Association of Manpower Agencies to abide by a Dhs1,469-a-month minimum pay.

A similar agreement applies for Indian staff at Dhs1,100, Dhs800 for Indonesia, Dhs825 for Sri Lanka and Dhs750 for Bangladesh. Nepal – which has had a particularly difficult history with worker abuse in the region (particularly Saudi Arabia) – has banned women under 30 from working in the Arabian Gulf and requires at least Dhs900 a month for those above 30.

You’ll have to excuse Kipp, but after years of everyone getting away with paying domestic workers practically nothing, the idea that a minimum wage – which still, in my opinion, remains shockingly low  – is ‘taking advantage’ of anyone, is impalpable.

Redis is enjoying rapid growth in businesses that want to leverage its speed and durability. Monitoring the open source, high performance key-value store, however, can be intimidating for IT departments. When Redis is partitioned into multiple instances, optimizing the performance of all the available instances can be a challenge. Likewise, when multiple slave copies of the Redis server are configured via master-slave replication, ensuring data synchronization between master and slave instances is a burden. The performance analytics from Applications Manager help IT devops staff understand and optimize the usage of Redis and Redis-powered apps.

“More organizations are investing in NoSQL technologies to help solve new business problems involving web, mobile and cloud environments,” said Sridhar Iyengar, vice president of product management at ManageEngine. “Today’s Redis announcement demonstrates that Applications Manager is committed to meeting the NoSQL challenge that we undertook earlier this year when we added support for Cassandra and MongoDB. Going forward, we will continue to provide meaningful performance stats for IT operations and application development teams seeking to better manage their NoSQL technologies.”

Redis Performance Monitoring with Applications Manager

Applications Manager enables comprehensive Redis performance monitoring to minimize downtime and optimize the performance of cloud apps powered by the Redis store. The key performance metrics of Redis monitored by Applications Manager include used memory, data size, replication, slow queries, and persistence of Redis dataset.

Among its many benefits, Applications Manager’s Redis monitoring helps IT personnel to:

• Monitor the data size of the Redis store and take preventive actions before the memory size grows out of proportion.
• Track the number of available and blocked connections between the database and the client as well as the connections rejected.
• Keep tabs on the operations affecting the Redis data space and provide stats on the number of keys that are found to be expired or evicted due to memory limits.
• Monitor the persistence of the Redis dataset and get notified during critical persistence states.

The support for Redis is complementary to the existing out-of-the-box support for 50+ apps such as Cassandra, MongoDB, memcached, Tomcat, JBoss and VMware.

Pricing and Availability

Applications Manager is available immediately with prices for the Professional Edition starting at $795 for up to 25 servers or applications. A free, fully functional, 30-day trial version is available at http://ow.ly/7evOs.

For more information on ManageEngine Applications Manager, please visit http://manageengine.com/apm. For more information on ManageEngine, please visithttp://www.manageengine.com/; follow the company blog at http://blogs.manageengine.com/  on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ManageEngine  and on Twitter at@ManageEngine.

Related ManageEngine Applications Manager Resources

• Customer testimonials: http://ow.ly/64PJJ
• Online demo: http://ow.ly/7evVt
• Support FAQs and User Forum: http://ow.ly/64PLc

Related ManageEngine Applications Manager News

• ManageEngine Monitors Application Performance for Big Data and NoSQL; http://ow.ly/jXF8Z
• ManageEngine Monitors Websites from Users’ Locations with Applications Manager; http://ow.ly/eRIMt
• ManageEngine Monitors Windows Azure with Applications Manager; http://ow.ly/dwiGV

About ManageEngine Applications Manager

ManageEngine Applications Manager is application performance monitoring software that helps businesses guarantee high availability and performance for their business applications by ensuring servers and applications have high uptime. It comes with out-of-the-box support for 50+ application servers, servers, databases and transactions spanning physical, virtual and cloud infrastructures. For more information on ManageEngine Applications Manager, please visit http://www.manageengine.com/apm.

About ManageEngine

ManageEngine delivers the real-time IT management tools that empower an IT team to meet an organization’s need for real-time services and support. Worldwide, more than 72,000 established and emerging enterprises — including more than 60 percent of the Fortune 500 — rely on ManageEngine products to ensure the optimal performance of their critical IT infrastructure, including networks, servers, applications, desktops and more. ManageEngine is a division of Zoho Corp. with offices worldwide, including the United States, India, Japan and China. For more information, please visit http://www.manageengine.com/; follow the company blog athttp://blogs.manageengine.com/, on Facebook athttp://www.facebook.com/ManageEngine and on Twitter at@ManageEngine.

###

ManageEngine is a trademark of Zoho Corp. All other brand names and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
Media Contacts:

Gitanjali Sreepal (Geet)

ManageEngine
gitanjali.s@manageengine.com
Follow us on Twitter: @manageengine

Nirmala D’souza

OAK Consulting FZ LLC

+971507343840

nimi@oakconsulting.biz

The film is directed by Anthony Bell (Rugrats, Alpha and Omega, and the upcoming Norm of the North) from a screenplay written by Rob Edwards (The Princess and the Frog, Treasure Planet). RGH Entertainment’s Randa Ayoubi and David Corbett are serving as executive producers.

Inspired by the book authored by L. Frank Baum, the creator of The Wizard of Oz, Life and Adventures of Santa Claus tells the story of a young boy who overcomes the odds to become one of the most beloved characters the world has ever known.

RGH will be attending the Cannes Film Festival with worldwide rights to the film, which will be available for a global theatrical release for Christmas 2014.

“Including L. Frank Baum’s timeless tale into our growing portfolio of IPs for children and family audiences has attracted some of the industry’s most respected names wanting to work with RGH Entertainment.” said Randa Ayoubi, Rubicon Group Holding CEO “Our production of Baum’s century-old book will reveal the little known story behind the myth of one of the most enchanting imaginary characters of all time”

“Our talented teams at RGH in Los Angeles, Manila, Dubai and Amman, Jordan are well on their way to crafting a highly entertaining film that will become a holiday tradition for many generations to come,” adds David Corbett, RGH Executive Director North America.

Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, follows close on the heels of its first feature film production, ‘Postman Pat: The Movie – You Know You’re the One’, produced in partnership with DreamWorks Classics.

About RGH

RGH (Rubicon Group Holding) is a diversified entertainment company devoted to the creation of incomparable entertainment experiences and interactive educational content across all media channels.   RGH has a team of 400 employees in four locations: Amman (Jordan), Los Angeles (United States), Manila (Philippines) and Dubai (United Arab Emirates). Together, RGH’s world class team collaborates to provide a unique perspective into the realization of compelling digital content and immersive entertainment.

Combining award winning creative and cutting-edge technology, RGH has an established reputation for innovation in four distinct business segments: Productions, Themed Entertainment, Games and Education. Our products and services are critically acclaimed by the industries’ experts: RGH’s Pink Panther and Pals series, co-produced with MGM, won four Kidscreen Awards in 2011; RGH’s Trashers iOS App won the 148Apps “Best Kids Game 2011” award.

www.rubiconholding.com | www.rghentertainment.com | www.rghgames.com | www.rghthemedentertainment.com | www.rgheducation.com

The award is in recognition of the operations contribution towards cultural and arts initiatives in Dubai. Organised by Dubai Culture & Arts Authority, forty individuals and organisations were honoured for supporting art and culture in Dubai and their significance contributions towards the four disciplines of art – visual arts, performing arts, film, and literature.

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai attended the ceremony while His Highness Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and Chairman of Dubai Media Incorporated and Federal National Council (FNC) Speaker Mohammed Ahmed Al Murr presented the awards in four categories: Distinguished Patrons of the Arts, Patrons of the Arts, Supporters of the Arts, and Friends of the Arts.

Commenting on winning the ‘Patron of the Arts’ award, Colm McLoughlin, Executive Vice Chairman of Dubai Duty Free said, “We are proud to receive this recognition which acknowledges the support that we give in this important field. Dubai has rapidly established a reputation as a centre for artistic achievement and we are delighted to be part of its success.” Dubai Duty Free is a founding sponsor of the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF), a Diamond sponsor of the Dubai Community Centre and Arts Community (DUCTAC), and is a sponsor of the annual Emirates Airline Festival of Literature.

The new fund will be run by Qatar Holding, Qatar Petroleum International and Qatar Electricity and Water Company , with a formal agreement to set up the vehicle to be signed later on Monday, a bourse filing from QEWC said.

It will invest outside Qatar ”in the fields of power generation, water desalination and treatment, heating and cooling systems, provision of fuel as well as fuel loading and unloading equipment,” the statement added.

A country with one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, Qatar has been extremely active in the investment space in recent years, backed by its huge hydrocarbon wealth.

Qatar Holding, the investment arm of the sovereign wealth fund, has bought up a string of high-profile assets, ranging from French soccer club Paris Saint-Germain to stakes in German sports-car maker Porsche, British bank Barclays and Swiss lender Credit Suisse.

Most blue collar workers in the Gulf Arab states are migrant labourers hired on a contract basis from South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, and strikes are uncommon.

Migrant workers in Dubai are often employed at wages that are low by Western standards and housed in dormitory-style accommodation on the outskirts of the city, part of the United Arab Emirates, a regional business and tourism hub.

Two Arabtec employees who asked not to be identified said several thousand workers engaged on various projects did not report for duty on Sunday and stayed in their accommodation.

A sub-contractor confirmed the stoppage, saying he had to call back his workers from one Dubai work site after Arabtec labourers failed to show up on Sunday.

Asked for comment, an Arabtec spokesperson said: “We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible, alongside the Ministry of Labour and the Police Authority.”

The UAE Labour Ministry told Reuters a team of the ministry’s labour crisis management committee was “closely following the work stoppage by a number of Arabtec’s workers”.

The ministry added that Arabtec was paying the workers according to contracts it had signed with them, and said their accommodation was in compliance with labour regulations.

FREE MEALS AND ACCOMMODATION

It said the labourers were receiving meals and had free transportation, housing and health insurance, services that it said were at least equal to their salaries.

The employees said the strike began on Saturday and that the workers were determined not to end it without a pay rise.

“They are upset at the low wages and also about not being paid for overtime work,” one employee told Reuters. He said workers at his site were paid between $160 and $190 a month.

“The protest started in Abu Dhabi on Saturday and today (Sunday), workers in Dubai have also joined,” he said.

Arabtec, the largest publicly-listed construction firm in the United Arab Emirates, was part of a consortium that won a $653 million contract in January to build a branch of France’s Louvre museum on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island. It was not clear whether this project was affected by the protest.

Arabtec was among the contractors that built Dubai’s palm-shaped island projects and the world’s tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa.

Dubai’s building boom stalled in 2009 after the global slowdown triggered a collapse in its real estate sector, with prices falling by over 50 percent from their peaks of 2008.

Construction has gradually picked up as developers have revived stalled projects and announced new ones including the world’s biggest Ferris wheel and more than 100 luxury hotels.

“DISTREE Middle East is a focused business-to-business event, which gives vendors and distributors an opportunity to meet and interact with resellers, retailers and e-tailers from across the region at one single venue. Hence, it is a perfect platform for us to introduce our exciting range of tablet PCs, better known as AXPAD and demonstrate their features and USPs to the regional channel community. We will also be looking for reputed distributors in countries, where we don’t have a strong presence and sign on new resellers and power retailers as well. We are looking to expand our network in the retail sector across the Middle East, North Africa and CIS countries,” said Mohamed Samy, Business Development Manager, Axtrom.

Axtrom’s AXPAD range of tablet PCs has been receiving great response from the regional market, where customers looking for high performance quality tablets at affordable prices have shown tremendous interest. Currently, Axtrom has 6 models of AXPAD PCs and plans to expand its range by adding several new models to its portfolio.

“Axtrom has been growing quite rapidly in the Middle East over the last one year. Our major focus from 2012 has been the tablet PC market as we saw this as one of the major market trends in this region. We offer retailers a wide range of products at competitive prices and we only offer the best quality products, which are specially designed keeping the customers’ preferences in mind. All our products have special packaging with ergonomic design. We also offer them RMA services at 10 service centers across the region. At DISTREE, we look forward to highlighting this with delegates and also discussing our channel and incentives program with them,” Samy added.

Through their participation at DISTREE Middle East, Axtrom hopes to increase its brand exposure, expand its channel and retail network, demonstrate its products and highlight their specialty and difference from other competitive brands.
-Ends-

About Axtrom

AXTROM™ was founded in 2006 by a team of talented and industry experienced professionals who anticipated the market needs and demands and steered the company toward long-term success. Axtrom is committed to delivering innovative and superior quality products which exceeds the customer’s demands. Axtrom’s dedication to quality extends beyond manufacturing to every aspect of its operation, including service.  Operating in an ethical way is the foundation of our business and our core values are deeply rooted in every aspect of our business.  Axtrom is driven by its profound passion for excellence and commitment to develop the best products and services on the market.  We continuously create long-term value for our customers and partners by being responsive to their needs and requirements.

Axtrom’s product basket encompasses a lineup of tablet PCs, peripherals, computer and tablet PC accessories and many other devices. Axtrom is based out of Hong Kong with a subsidiary office in Dubai-UAE.

For further information, please visit http://www.axtrom.com

Media Contacts:

Chantelle Tavid

Marketing Manager

Axtrom

Tel: + 971 4 8863300 ext 121

chantelle.tavid@axtrom.com

The Qatar sovereign fund is “carefully looking at” Versace, the Italian daily said, citing financial sources.

The paper cited market rumours as saying the fund was flanked by FSI, the Italian strategic investment fund owned by state financing company Cassa Depositi e Prestiti.

In November, Qatar Holding signed a joint venture agreement with FSI to invest in Italian companies in sectors including food, fashion and luxury.

Il Sole said that there were some 10 other expressions of interest for Versace besides that of Qatar and FSI.

But the paper added things were at an early stage and that the Versace owners had not decided yet whether to sell a minority stake.

FSI said it did not comment market rumours. Versace was not immediately available for a comment.

In April, Versace Chief Executive Gian Giacomo Ferraris told Reuters the house may consider opening the company to outside investors to help fund expansion in overseas markets such as Asia.

Earlier this month Qatar Holding agreed to buy a 40 percent stake in Milan’s real estate development project Porta Nuova for an undisclosed sum.

F&F, which opened its first franchise store in Saudi Arabia last year, said it would open shops across the Middle East and in Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Up to six stores will be opened this year, with the first in the Kazakh capital Astana next month.

F&F gave no details on how much the expansion would cost or how it would be funded.

“This announcement builds on the success of the first franchise stores and demonstrates our commitment to growing the brand internationally through this model,” F&F Chief Executive Jason Tarry said in a statement.

The company said it would extend its existing agreement with franchise operator Al Hokair, and would also work with new partner Dubai-based Al Futtaim.

F&F clothing is already sold in 12 countries, including the Czech Republic and Poland.

In the same way that Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom maintains control of his application at Facebook, David Karp (Tumblr CEO) will stay at Yahoo! for at least four years, get a ‘windfall’ of cash and retain ‘a lot’ of control over the service. The upside? Yahoo intends to bring years of experience and established infrastructure to Tumblr’s relatively nascent advertising model.

Since Marissa Mayer took over as Yahoo’s CEO last summer, this has been her largest acquisition yet.

Previous Story:

Yahoo needs to be cool again. It needs a younger target audience – preferably one between 18 and 24 years old. It needs to invest more in marketing and become more ‘visibly’ trendy. And one of its main lingering challenges? Its aging demographic.

Kipp is slightly paraphrasing; these aren’t our words. Earlier this week, at JP Morgan’s Global Technology conference, Yahoo’s CFO, Ken Goldman, explicitly highlighted the company’s challenges and its need to slightly shake things up again. As it turns out, Yahoo’s possible $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr – a blogging platform founded by the now 26-year-old David Karp in 2007, with more than 86 million blogs – may serve as their path to ‘coolness’.

And why wouldn’t it? According to analysts, the site has the ’18- to-24-year-old sweet spot’ demographic, along with high levels of credibility among its users. The real question isn’t necessarily whether this move would be good for Yahoo, rather, would it be beneficial for Tumblr’s repertoire in the long run.

Whenever a billion-dollar tech acquisition is imminent, both excitement and heavy criticism are bound to follow. Countless reports have suggested that Yahoo’s board meeting on Sunday evening will decide whether the take-over is the right move for Yahoo!.

Interestingly enough, on the other end of the spectrum, are reports – or rather speculation – about the invasion of an outsider. Quite similarly to how Facebook ‘stole’ the acquisition of Instagram away from Twitter in 2012, rumours suggest that the social network will, could or should swoop in again and place a higher bid for Tumblr.

According to the Business Insider, it is very unlikely. Apparently, the notion that someone within the Tumblr team purposely sparked rumours of this so-called ‘auction’ to try and drive up the acquisition price was a believable one – until they were told that no such auction or offer will be made.

There are a few outcomes to tonight’s meeting. Either Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer will decide that acquiring Tumblr isn’t worth a billion dollars and that a strategic partnership, rather than a full-blown acquisition, would serve them well. On the other hand, Karp could also just as easily raise the price of his company drastically and not accept a penny under – or decide that he’d no longer like to sell it.

Either way, nothing is certain yet, and the fact that Facebook hasn’t yet made a public offer does not mean they won’t. At this point, it’s improbable but not impossible.

*Photo Credit

Signed in the Jordanian capital of Amman, the agreement aims at taking the development of smartphones and tablets applications and games in the Arab world to the next level. It paves the way for producing a new set of games that will be built by MadVillage.

Upon the agreement, Kindi will provide ground-breaking solutions that will enable MadVillage to design interactive and educational games targeting smartphones and tablets. Kindi will also deploy its broad network with the world’s largest game studios, opening the doors to MadVillage to export its products to the global markets.

In his comment, the CEO at Kindi, Ammar Mardawi, said: “We are keen in Kindi to supply our clients with comprehensive, up-to-date tools utilized for developing high-quality apps for smartphones and tablets.”

“Our choice went rather naturally in favor of MadVillage, whose staff encompasses competent employees and enjoys an excellent track record in producing interactive games along with other applications supported by different platforms. There’s no doubt that tablets and smartphones are major mediums used by companies around the world today to communicate with their clients,” Mardawi added.

For his part, the CEO at MadVillage, Ata Alqadi, welcomed the signing of the agreement, saying: “We are pleased to partner with Kindi, which will share with us its large expertise and business network in the games development industry. Through Kindi’s database of over 6000 clients world-wide, we will be able to launch our new game titles and expand our business to global markets.”

“Our future plans are to target gaming fans in the Arab world and companies looking for new social and smartphones games to spread their brand. In addition, preparations are currently underway at MadVillage to build customized applications for our clients that would satisfy their various needs,” Alqadi added.

It is worth mentioning that Kindi operates as a leader in software development tools with its flagship product secureSWF, which is the world’s best Flash applications security software being used by international companies such as Adobe, Sony and PopCap.

- Ends -

About Kindi

Established in 2006, Kindi was named in honor of the brilliant scientist, Al-Kindi, and his contributions to the field of cryptography. Kindi is specialized in building software development tools. It’s flagship product, secureSWF, is the world’s best Flash applications security software being used by international companies such as Adobe, Sony and PopCap.

Headquartered in the Jordanian capital of Amman, Kindi has more than 6000 clients in the American, European and East Asian markets. Additionally, it holds strong partnerships with the largest technology companies worldwide. To learn more about Kindi, visit www.kindi.com

About MadVillage

MadVillage Entertainment develops easy-to-pick-up, hard-to-put-down casual games, as well as apps of all kinds for iOS, Android, Facebook, and other platforms. Available in many languages, MadVillage games feature world-class design and game mechanics that satisfy the varying needs of clients. Its apps are the first choice of individuals and businesses everywhere. To learn more about MadVillage, visit www.madvillage.com

*****

For more information, please call

PRLaunchers / Tel: 00 962 6 55 20 681 – Fax: 00 962 6 55 20 681

Email: info@PRLaunchers.com – Web: www.PRLaunchers.com

]]> http://www.kippreport.com/news/press-release/kindi-enters-into-strategic-partnership-with-madvillage/feed/ 0 http://www.kippreport.com/news/press-release/first-utm-solution-to-deliver-combined-gateway-endpoint-and-cloud-web-protection/ http://www.kippreport.com/news/press-release/first-utm-solution-to-deliver-combined-gateway-endpoint-and-cloud-web-protection/#comments Sun, 19 May 2013 09:53:58 +0000 anila http://www.kippreport.com/?p=75121 Dubai, UAE – May 19, 2013 – Sophos today announced the availability of Sophos UTM Connected, the latest version of its award-winning UTM (unified threat management solution). This release introduces expanded UTM managed endpoint protection with unique Web in Endpoint functionality, broader wireless coverage for large scale wireless deployments and higher performance networking.

As the complexities of securing all networks have grown, so have the struggles for businesses to fully optimize the many point security solutions they have purchased. A UTM is the proven solution to address this problem, however most simply put layers of protection on a single appliance. The introduction of Web in Endpoint functionality lets Sophos UTM go a stage further and make security layers communicate and combine to deliver more effective protection. This approach simplifies user experience and delivers a higher level of overall protection on which customers can rely.

“Small businesses face many of the same security challenges as do large enterprises— a distributed workforce and doing more with fewer resources,” said Charles Kolodgy, research vice president, IDC. “With Sophos UTM Connected, these businesses have a single consolidated security solution, one that allows them to deploy an endpoint client that synchronizes with their gateway web policy. Web security becomes easier to configure and stronger as a result.”

Through a unique integration of gateway, endpoint and cloud technology, the Sophos UTM now provides administrators with full web protection and control for endpoints roaming outside of the corporate network. As systems roam the globe, this integration enables complete oversight and security for endpoints as though they are in the office. Policies can be updated and reporting data accessed in near real-time for every protected endpoint.

Sophos web protection is backed by SophosLabs, the company’s global network of threat intelligence centers that identifies and protects against tens of thousands of infected URLs and hundreds of thousands of new variants of malicious code daily. Web in Endpoint is available at no extra cost to UTM Endpoint and Web Protection customers.

New UTM wireless capabilities enable businesses to extend wireless and accelerate VPN access faster and more securely. With wireless bridging and repeating support, Sophos access points reach further – capable of extending wireless range without the need for Ethernet cables. Sophos VPN functionality now  makes load balancing and failover of traffic between IPsec VPN tunnels simple to set-up.

“We’re excited about this latest release from Sophos and feel it will provide considerable benefit to customers, in particular, businesses with distributed workforces,” said Sam Heard, president, Data Integrity Services. “Businesses need to ensure their employees are protected against web-based threats, and employees want ultra-fast wired and wireless connectivity; this makes Sophos UTM Connected a win/win for the entire organization.”

“Customers and partners shape our UTM roadmap, ensuring that we deliver innovative technology that is practical to use in a business environment,” said Chris Kraft, vice president, product management, Sophos. “Web in Endpoint is a great example of solving a complex problem with a simple solution. Because we have proven endpoint protection and secure web gateway expertise, we are uniquely positioned to help IT administrators secure their roaming workforces – and having a single solution like this makes life easier for our channel partners to deploy security too.”

Additional information on all of the additional features in Sophos UTM Connected can be found here. For additional information on Sophos’ unified solutions, please visit www.sophos.com/networksecurity.

About Sophos

More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos’ complete security solutions as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Simple to deploy, manage, and use, Sophos’ award-winning network security, encryption, endpoint security, Web, email, and mobile solutions are backed by SophosLabs – a global network of threat intelligence centers.

Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.

Media Contact:

Nirmala D’souza

OAK Consulting FZ LLC

+971507343840

nimi@oakconsulting.biz

An investigation traced the “coordinated and simultaneous attacks” to hundreds of Internet protocol addresses in a number of countries, an unnamed source at the Saudi Interior Ministry told state news agency SPA.

The interior ministry website crashed on Wednesday after it received a “huge amount” of service requests, but was back online less than two hours later after the “necessary technical drills” were performed to counter the attack, the source said.

The report made no mention of a possible motive.

Businesses, government agencies and critical infrastructure operators face unprecedented challenges from increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks launched by criminals, hacker activists and foreign governments.

An attack last year on national oil company Saudi Aramco - the world’s biggest oil company – damaged some 30,000 computers and was one of the most destructive cyber strikes conducted against a single business.

That attack used a computer virus known as Shamoon. A group that claimed responsibility said Saudi Aramcowas the main source of income for the Saudi government, which it blamed for “crimes and atrocities” in several countries including Syria and Bahrain.

On Friday, the website and Twitter feed of the Financial Times newspaper were hacked, apparently by the “Syrian Electronic Army”, a group of online activists who say they supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Moody’s Investors Service raised its rating on Ankara’s sovereign bonds to Baa3, or investment grade, from Ba1 late on Thursday, following in the footsteps of Fitch credit ratings agency, which took that step last November.

The upgrade came on a day when Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was showcasing Turkey’s global prestige on a visit to the White House, and in a week when the emerging nation of 75 million made a final loan repayment to the International Monetary Fund.

“It was a major strategic step for Turkey,” said Erdal Tanas Karagol, economic director of the SETA think-tank in Ankara.

“This will help the current ruling party prepare long-term plans, to set higher goals and will create a suitable international environment to carry out those plans.”

The boost puts Turkey 11 notches on Moody’s rating scale above historic rival Greece, on the other side of the European Union frontier, and should drive more foreign direct investment (FDI) to an economy that still has great potential to grow.

“The ratings agencies are finally catching up with the fact that the Turkish government has done a huge amount of work in the last decade to put the country onto a stronger economic and political footing,” said Simon Quijano-Evans, head of emerging market research at Commerzbank in London.

Government debt has fallen to 30 percent of gross domestic product from more than 100 percent in the crisis years early last decade. Inflation and the budget deficit are falling.

POLICY ANCHOR

Turkey’s IMF programme and candidacy to join the EU provided a strong policy anchor in the early years of Erdogan’s mildly Islamist conservative AK party government from 2003. But the pace of political reform has slowed as EU accession talks have run into the sand due to Cypriot and French obstruction.

“There is a sense of a lost anchor,” said Sinan Ulgen, chairman of the Istanbul Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, EDAM.

The EU had lost influence on issues such as media freedom, tolerance of dissent and freedom of expression because Turks no longer believed they were wanted inside the European bloc. Rights groups complain Erdogan is falling short on democracy.

Ulgen said the rating upgrade was a triple vote of confidence in the resilience of the Turkish economy despite Europe’s debt crisis, in sound economic and fiscal management, and in a strengthened geopolitical relationship with the West.

Since we’ve written about the card possibly a thousand times (here, here, here and here), it’s been called all sorts of names; one of the more positive ones being ‘wallet-stiffener’.

But the day when it will require a more prominent position in our wallet is drawing closer – some time in 2015, we’re led to believe.

According to a report by The National, not only is the Emirates Identity Authority currently ‘in talks’ with the Central Bank of the UAE to enable financial transactions on the card, but the government body is ‘keen’ to give the ID card a bit more functionality than a mere form of authentication.

Kipp feels relatively comfortable speaking for the majority of the population when we say we are just as keen, if not more so.

Currently, the authority is working with banks, telecom companies and other private and public sector entities to eventually maximise the use of the chip, for both the aforementioned entities, and residents.

“The trends show that the cards and payment industry is going more towards convergence, interoperability and integration,” said Ali Mohamed Al Khouri, the director general of the EIA at the Cards Middle East exhibition in Dubai.

The paper’s report further notes that the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, Sharjah Islamic Bank and Al Hilal Bank are already using the card for some of their services – including opening new accounts and registering for loans. However, Al Hilal is also experimenting with the possibility of using it as a pre-paid credit card.

“There is so much dependency on paper verification. We have to create a paradigm shift in the mindset of the government and government organisations to take this card and enable new and interesting initiatives,” added Mr Al Khouri.

We couldn’t agree more.

The last thing that Europe’s overcrowded aviation sector needs right now is Turkish Airlines. The ambitious flag carrier is doubling its fleet and splashing out on costly marketing in a bid for a slot in the global top 10. As investment stories go, it sounds pie in the sky. But the shares have performed well and a continuing discount suggests there is more to go for.

Travelling on Turkish Airlines was once so bad that locals joked that its initials THY (Turk Hava Yollari) stood for They Hate You. Today, the award-winning airline has become a symbol of Turkey’s wider vision for growth that capitalises on Istanbul’s position as a gateway between east and west. Istanbul’s new airport, due to open in 2017, will be one of the biggest in the world.

The strategy of exploiting Istanbul as a hub has precedent. The big Gulf carriers – Emirates, Qatar Airways andEtihad - have achieved success as each of their home cities have become a nodal point between east and west. Almost a quarter of passengers that fly with Turkish Airlines only enter the country to fly out again. And while Turkish Airlines doesn’t have the deep pockets of its Gulf peers, it does benefit from a large domestic market of 75 million people.

What’s more, the airline’s plans look realistic. The aim to more than double its passengers to 90 million per a year by 2020 implies a 10 percent compound annual growth rate, compared to 16 percent between 2004 and 2012, say analysts at local brokerage IS Investment.

Assuming the demand will come as forecast, the challenge will be to harness it without letting costs rise or quality slip. The power of the main union looks weak after a strike on Wednesday failed to disrupt services and analysts expect it to stay that way. Chief Executive Temel Kotil has denied reports of a boardroom struggle and will take a short break to look after his sick father. It will be important for him to return quickly.

Turkish Airlines shares have risen 204 percent in the past year but they still trade at only 8.2 times forward earnings. Its long-mooted partner Lufthansa, which has been forced to suspend its dividend and cut costs, trades on almost 13 times. And fast-growing Air China trades at around 12 times. The drag is uncertainty over the government’s 49 percent stake. But signs of operational success should both narrow the discount and make it more likely that the overhang will be removed.