Another great guest post from The National's media maven, Keach Hagey:
Arabic is
the fastest-growing language on the internet. By a lot. From 2000 to
2008, the growth rate in Arabic-speaking internet users was 2064 per
cent, more than three times the rate of grown of Chinese.
This
fact was probably the cheeriest to emerge from the Arab Knowledge
Report, co-produced by the Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum
Foundation and the United Nations Development Programme, released
yesterday to great fanfare in Dubai (click here to download the report).
The report had all sorts of grim
things to say about the state of the region's education, which leaves
one third of the population unable to read and write, as Nour Samaha
covered in today's paper. That grimness is thoroughly backed up by a seriously unhappy article on Arab education systems recently published in The Economist.
The Arab Knowledge Report ends with an unvarnished conclusion that "as
a whole, the Arab states have made no tangible progress with respect to
freedom of though and of expression."
But
ICT was a rare point of light amidst the gloom.
For one thing, they're
investing. In 2008, Arab countries recorded levels of development in
technological performance exceeding those observed in all other regions
of the world, according to the World Bank Report on Knowledge
Assessment Methodology. Four Arab countries -- UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and
Kuwait -- have been listed among the top 50 countries most ready to use
ICT, according to the World Economic Forum in 2008.
But
the potential is very uneven. Only in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait is
personal computer ownership higher than the global average. And
bandwidth in the region is still pretty appalling -- less than half of
the global average of bits of bandwidth per person even even the two
most networked countries, Qatar and the UAE. As an example, the report
notes that internet users in the US, Canada, the UK, Singapore and
Japan enjoy speeds faster than one billion kilobits per second; in most
Arab countries, the connection speeds range from 128kb to 102kh. So if
this page seemed to take a long time to load, it's not in your head.
But
of course the real guts of the beast, and the purpose of the report, is
content, content, content. And in this realm, despite the rapid uptake
of internet use among Arabic speakers, is still dismal. According to a
2007 study by Madar, the Digital Economy Research Centre in Dubai, out
of forty million of the forty billion web pages it looked at were
Arabic-only -- or one thousandth of the total.
SPEC%20SHEET%3A%20APPLE%20IPHONE%2015%20PRO%20MAX
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
MATCH DETAILS
Liverpool 2
Wijnaldum (14), Oxlade-Chamberlain (52)
Genk 1
Samatta (40)
In-demand jobs and monthly salaries
- Technology expert in robotics and automation: Dh20,000 to Dh40,000
- Energy engineer: Dh25,000 to Dh30,000
- Production engineer: Dh30,000 to Dh40,000
- Data-driven supply chain management professional: Dh30,000 to Dh50,000
- HR leader: Dh40,000 to Dh60,000
- Engineering leader: Dh30,000 to Dh55,000
- Project manager: Dh55,000 to Dh65,000
- Senior reservoir engineer: Dh40,000 to Dh55,000
- Senior drilling engineer: Dh38,000 to Dh46,000
- Senior process engineer: Dh28,000 to Dh38,000
- Senior maintenance engineer: Dh22,000 to Dh34,000
- Field engineer: Dh6,500 to Dh7,500
- Field supervisor: Dh9,000 to Dh12,000
- Field operator: Dh5,000 to Dh7,000
MOUNTAINHEAD REVIEW
Starring: Ramy Youssef, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman
Director: Jesse Armstrong
Rating: 3.5/5
All%20We%20Imagine%20as%20Light
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Other must-tries
Tomato and walnut salad
A lesson in simple, seasonal eating. Wedges of tomato, chunks of cucumber, thinly sliced red onion, coriander or parsley leaves, and perhaps some fresh dill are drizzled with a crushed walnut and garlic dressing. Do consider yourself warned: if you eat this salad in Georgia during the summer months, the tomatoes will be so ripe and flavourful that every tomato you eat from that day forth will taste lacklustre in comparison.
Badrijani nigvzit
A delicious vegetarian snack or starter. It consists of thinly sliced, fried then cooled aubergine smothered with a thick and creamy walnut sauce and folded or rolled. Take note, even though it seems like you should be able to pick these morsels up with your hands, they’re not as durable as they look. A knife and fork is the way to go.
Pkhali
This healthy little dish (a nice antidote to the khachapuri) is usually made with steamed then chopped cabbage, spinach, beetroot or green beans, combined with walnuts, garlic and herbs to make a vegetable pâté or paste. The mix is then often formed into rounds, chilled in the fridge and topped with pomegranate seeds before being served.
The specs
Engine: 3.8-litre, twin-turbo V8
Transmission: eight-speed automatic
Power: 582bhp
Torque: 730Nm
Price: Dh649,000
On sale: now
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Fire and Fury
By Michael Wolff,
Henry Holt
Other workplace saving schemes
- The UAE government announced a retirement savings plan for private and free zone sector employees in 2023.
- Dubai’s savings retirement scheme for foreign employees working in the emirate’s government and public sector came into effect in 2022.
- National Bonds unveiled a Golden Pension Scheme in 2022 to help private-sector foreign employees with their financial planning.
- In April 2021, Hayah Insurance unveiled a workplace savings plan to help UAE employees save for their retirement.
- Lunate, an Abu Dhabi-based investment manager, has launched a fund that will allow UAE private companies to offer employees investment returns on end-of-service benefits.
TO A LAND UNKNOWN
Director: Mahdi Fleifel
Starring: Mahmoud Bakri, Aram Sabbah, Mohammad Alsurafa
Rating: 4.5/5
F1 The Movie
Starring: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Rating: 4/5
'The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting up a Generation for Failure'
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, Penguin Randomhouse
Jetour T1 specs
Engine: 2-litre turbocharged
Power: 254hp
Torque: 390Nm
Price: From Dh126,000
Available: Now
Neymar's bio
Total club appearances 411
Total goals scored 241
Appearances for Barca 186
Goals scored for Barca 105
COMPANY%20PROFILE%20
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Match info
Uefa Nations League Group B:
England v Spain, Saturday, 11.45pm (UAE)