TOWNSVILLE, AUSTRALIA // Terry Campese, nephew of the rugby union great David Campese, will replace the Australia captain Darren Lockyer at five-eighth for the Rugby League World Cup pool match against Papua New Guinea this weekend.
Campese, who was struggling to earn a new club contract at the Canberra Raiders before reviving his career with a strong back half of the National Rugby League season, was one of four new caps selected today for the Kangaroos. With Australia already guaranteed a semi-final place after big wins over England and New Zealand, coach Ricky Stewart decided to rotate his squad for Sunday's match against the winless Kumuls.
Campese, whose uncle played 101 rugby union Tests and scored 64 tries for Australia, and was voted player of the 1991 World Cup, will line up at five-eight, with the Manly winger David Williams and backrower Anthony Watmough and Brisbane winger Darius Boyd also making their debuts.
Hooker Cameron Smith will play his third straight match and fill in for Lockyer as captain, with the North Queensland Cowboys playmaker Johnathan Thurston returning at halfback in front of his home crowd after missing the 52-4 win over England last weekend because of an injured shoulder.
Papua New Guinea coach Adrian Lam named a 20-man squad containing four uncapped players and will trim that to 17 ahead of the match.
New Zealand made five changes for Saturday's match against England in Newcastle - which is basically a rehearsal of the subsequent play-off match for both teams.
Prop Evarn Tuimavave will replace captain Nathan Cayless, who will be rested on Saturday following the Kiwis' 48-6 win over PNG on the Gold Coast last weekend.
The Melbourne Storm backrower Jeremy Smith will captain the Kiwis, with David Fa'alogo joining him in the starting pack.
Steve Matai will return from suspension to take his place in the centres.
"We showed some improvement against Papua New Guinea, especially with our defence, but this match against England is critical to us as we strive to show further improvements in all areas of our performance," the Kiwi coach Stephen Kearney said.
"We're not thinking about what happened to England against Australia. All that counts for us is how we prepare and how we play in this match against England. We have to get it right."
New Zealand have one win and one defeat to their name after their opening 30-6 loss to Australia.
England struggled against PNG 32-22 in Townsville in their opening match before being trounced by Australia last weekend.
The England forward Kevin Sinfield said the players wanted to make amends for the humiliating loss to Australia. "There is a lot of hunger and determination to go out and perform," Sinfield said. "We'll get better and better as the tournament goes on. Hopefully we can fix some more things up for this weekend and put in a great performance and look to build on that."
Gareth Ellis was confident England would rebound quickly from the heavy loss. "We're pretty disappointed," he said. "We went into the game quite confident and in the first half I felt we were dominating in certain areas. They were clinical and got the points on the board. Then obviously in the second half we came out and went a little bit soft. "New Zealand are going to be tough but we've got to pick ourselves up. We can't dwell on this for too long."
New Zealand: Lance Hohaia, Jason Nightingale, Steve Matai, Jerome Ropati, Manu Vatuvei, Benji Marshall, Thomas Leuluai, Adam Blair, Nathan Fien, Evarn Tuimavave, Simon Mannering, David Fa'alogo, Jeremy Smith (captain). Interchange: Issac Luke, Greg Eastwood, Bronson Harrison, David Kidwell.
England: Rob Burrow, Mark Calderwood, Gareth Ellis, Martin Gleeson, Mickey Higham, Gareth Hock, Jamie Jones-Buchanan, Jamie Langley, Danny McGuire, Adrian Morley, Jamie Peacock (captain), Leon Pryce, Rob Purdham, Keith Senior, Kevin Sinfield, Lee Smith, Paul Sykes, Paul Wellens, Ben Westwood
Australia: Karmichael Hunt, Darius Boyd, Brent Tate, Joel Monaghan, David Williams, Terry Campese, Johnathan Thurston, Brent Kite, Cameron Smith (captain), Josh Perry, Anthony Watmough, Anthony Tupou, Craig Fitzgibbon. Interchange: Scott Prince, Steve Price, Paul Gallen, Israel Folau.
Papua New Guinea: John Wilshere (captain), David Moore, Tu'u Maori, Anton Kui, George Kepa, Stanley Gene, Keith Peters, Jason Chan, Paul Aiton, Trevor Exton, Neville Costigan, James Nightingale, Rod Griffin. Interchange: Kevin Prior, Nicko Slain, Jessie Joe Parker, Charlie Wabo, Jay Aston, Menzie Yere, George Monie (3 to be omitted).
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
RACE CARD
5pm: Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan Racing Festival Purebred Arabian Cup Conditions (PA); Dh 200,000 (Turf) 1,600m
5.30pm: Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak Cup Conditions (PA); Dh 200,000 (T) 1,600m
6pm: Sheikh Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan National Day Cup Listed (TB); Dh 380,000 (T) 1,600m
6.30pm: Sheikh Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan National Day Group 3 (PA); Dh 500,000 (T) 1,600m
7pm: Sheikh Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan National Day Jewel Crown Group 1 (PA); Dh 5,000,000 (T) 2,200m
7.30pm: Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan Racing Festival Handicap (PA); Dh 150,000 (T) 1,400m
8pm: Wathba Stallions Cup Handicap (PA) Dh 100,000 (T); 1,400m
The National Archives, Abu Dhabi
Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.
Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en
Which honey takes your fancy?
Al Ghaf Honey
The Al Ghaf tree is a local desert tree which bears the harsh summers with drought and high temperatures. From the rich flowers, bees that pollinate this tree can produce delicious red colour honey in June and July each year
Sidr Honey
The Sidr tree is an evergreen tree with long and strong forked branches. The blossom from this tree is called Yabyab, which provides rich food for bees to produce honey in October and November. This honey is the most expensive, but tastiest
Samar Honey
The Samar tree trunk, leaves and blossom contains Barm which is the secret of healing. You can enjoy the best types of honey from this tree every year in May and June. It is an historical witness to the life of the Emirati nation which represents the harsh desert and mountain environments
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Distributed denial-of-service: Floods systems, servers or networks with information, effectively blocking them.
Man-in-the-middle attack: Intercepts two-way communication to obtain information, spy on participants or alter the outcome.
Malware: Installs itself in a network when a user clicks on a compromised link or email attachment.
Phishing: Aims to secure personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.
Ransomware: Encrypts user data, denying access and demands a payment to decrypt it.
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Trojans: Create a backdoor into systems, which becomes a point of entry for an attack.
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Worms: Send copies of themselves to other users or contacts. They don't attack the system, but they overload it.
Zero-day exploit: Exploits a vulnerability in software before a fix is found.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Business Insights
- As per the document, there are six filing options, including choosing to report on a realisation basis and transitional rules for pre-tax period gains or losses.
- SMEs with revenue below Dh3 million per annum can opt for transitional relief until 2026, treating them as having no taxable income.
- Larger entities have specific provisions for asset and liability movements, business restructuring, and handling foreign permanent establishments.
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