On a Sunday evening in early June, thousands of Hasidic men in long coats and black hats braved the heat to attend two outdoor anti-Internet asifas (or gatherings in Yiddish) organized by leaders of the ultra-Orthodox Satmar community of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, N.Y. Women were forbidden, but the real temptation for the men was already in their laps, where they covertly thumbed their smartphones.

CEO of Citi - Middle East division spoke to LSE graduates about Dubai's increasing "global attractiveness to investors, corporations and talent."

Globalisation, urbanisation and digitisation are the key trends shaping the future of Dubai as it develops into a global city, according to Atiq ur Rehman, CEO Citi - Middle East division.

Speaking to an audience of over 100 graduating Executive MBA students and alumni at London Business School's 'Spring Celebration Event', Mr. Rehman discussed the international appeal of Dubai that is fuelling its competitiveness as a global city.

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Foreign direct investment, or FDI, into Arab world rose by nearly 10 per cent in 2012 led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, according to a latest report.

Last year, Arab countries attracted FDI worth $47.1 billion despite political uncertainty in some of them compared to $42.9 billion in the previous year, the Arab Investment and Export Credit Guarantee Corp said in its annual report, which covered 20 out of 22 Arab League.

The foreign investment inflow rose in 15 countries including Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen despite violence and unrest issue during the last three years.

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The subscriptions to IPOs (initial public offerings) in the Saudi stock market dropped drastically during the year, according to a recent economic study.

"The total amount of IPO subscriptions since the beginning of the year till June fell to SR 1.2 billion, accounting for 53 percent compared to SR 2.5 billion in the same period last year," the study published by Al-Eqtisadiah business daily said yesterday.

The study was made after the completion of the fourth IPO for the American International Group and Arab National Bank Cooperative Insurance Co. (AIGANB) early June.

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High court dismissed claim by Indigenous Australian that plan violated anti-discrimination laws

National Audit Office report shows drop in recruitment from private sector to senior civil service and high staff turnover

Less than a third of permanent secretaries have delivery and commercial skills, a report has found.

The National Audit office study into senior civil service capability revealed that just four out of 15 permanent secretaries had significant experience in a corporate or delivery environment.

The report also found a sharp decline in the number of new recruits entering the senior civil service from the private sector. In 2011-12, 72% of recruits came from within Whitehall whilst just 9% came from the private sector. This was compared to 10% in 2010-11 and 23% in 2003-04. More staff were recruited externally in specialist fields such as IT (52%) and finance (45%), but recruits were predominantly internal in areas such as project delivery (21%), policy (15%), law (6%) and tax (0%).

Head of the NAO, Amyas Morse, said progress on creating a more corporate approach would need to be "rapid" and involve all senior civil servants – not just those on corporate talent programmes.

Staff churn within the senior civil service was also high, with an average turnover rate of 16.9%. The Cabinet Office had the highest departmental turnover rate at 34%, followed by the Department for Culture, Media & Sport with 34%. The report states that this high level of leadership churn led to "gaps in project oversight", and had contributed to failed projects such as the West Coast Mainline franchising competition.

Satisfaction with pay has also fallen since 2009. A quarter of senior civil servants said their salary was reasonable compared to those in other organisations – down from 39% three years ago. Although women account for 37% of the senior civil service, the gender pay gap now stands at 5.3%; the highest since it was first recorded in 2001. The report also states that a fifth of senior civil servants are thinking of leaving within a year.

Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union for senior civil servants, said that failure to address the issue of pay and reward would have "serious consequences" for delivering reforms.

The report also questioned the effectiveness of the 24 professional networks, which it said "vary dramatically" in terms of resources and engagement, and lack influence across departmental silos. It also said the shift of focus to professions would be a challenge to traditional hierarchical decision-making processes which are dominated by those with policy, rather than delivery, experience.

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said that, although progress had been made on strengthening leadership, the civil service "must constantly evolve and keep striving to better itself".

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Afghan President Karzai "suspended security talks with the U.S. to protest the American outreach to the Taliban -- jeopardizing plans to maintain a U.S. military presence beyond next year," the Wall Street Journal reports.

Reporter who was killed in a car accident on Tuesday had little time for 'spinmeisters' and an incredible instinct, say colleagues

Tributes have poured in for the award-winning journalist and war correspondent, Michael Hastings, who has died aged 33 in a car accident in Los Angeles.

Described by colleagues as "fearless" and "irascible", news of his death shook the American media establishment when it was announced late on Tuesday.

Hastings was best known for his devastating Rolling Stone cover profile of General Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of US-led forces in Afghanistan in 2010. Headlined The Runaway General, Hastings' piece brought McChrystal's career crashing down as it documented the military leader's candid criticisms of President Barack Obama.

"I never expected the McChrystal story to have the impact that it did," Hastings later said. "It forced me to try to top the reporting. I think we succeeded at that. And the fucking bar was high, right?"

The unvarnished report was characteristic of a journalist who refused to cosy up to Washington and had little patience for official "spinmeisters", his former colleagues said.

More recently, Hastings reported for the social news website BuzzFeed. Ben Smith, the site's editor-in-chief, announced his death shortly before 7pm in New York on Tuesday.

"We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone. Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered, from wars to politicians," said Smith.

"He wrote stories that would otherwise have gone unwritten, and without him there are great stories that will go untold."

Hastings is survived by his wife, the writer Elise Jordan, and their corgi puppy, Bobby Sneakers.

"Great reporters exude a certain kind of electricity," said Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana on Tuesday night. "The sense that there are stories burning inside them, and that there's no higher calling or greater way to live life than to be always relentlessly trying to find and tell those stories.

"I'm sad that I'll never get to publish all the great stories that he was going to write, and sad that he won't be stopping by my office for any more short visits which would stretch for two or three completely engrossing hours. He will be missed."

Hastings was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, a magazine that afforded him free rein to pursue truth and expose hypocrisy in war-ravaged Afghanistan and Iraq. The conflicts impacted Hastings personally: in 2007, his then-fiancee, the aide worker Andi Parhamovich, was killed in an ambush in Baghdad.

The 26-year-old Hastings commemorated his tragically-curtailed relationship in the book, I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story.

On a sabbatical from war reporting, Hastings last year sought out the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for a judiciously-arranged interview when he was based at a friend's house in the Norfolk countryside. With two digital recorders on the coffee table, Hastings asked the world's most wanted whistleblower: "Are you fucked?"

Assange was not the only subject of Hastings' occasional intemperance. In an exchange with Hillary Clinton's aide, Philippe Reines, in September 2012, Hastings was asked: "Why do you bother to ask questions you've already decided you know the answers to?"

He replied: "Why don't you give answers that aren't bullshit for a change?"

The response prompted Reines to call Hastings an "unmitigated asshole" and add: "Now that we've gotten that out of our systems, have a good day. And by good day, I mean fuck off."

"Michael was angry. He was also loving, and thoughtful, and constructive, and brilliant, but he was angry about things that weren't right in the world," said the MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.

"He was angry with things that weren't right in the world, and with war, and with loss, and that drove his reporting and it made him fearless when he realised he had found something important that he could report."

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MANILA: The Philippines Wednesday said it would keep its peacekeepers in the Golan Heights until at least August, and may stay longer if the United Nations increased security there.
Foreign...

Minutes show outgoing Bank of England governor was denied parting wish for more money-boosting measures

Sir Mervyn King was denied his parting wish for more money-boosting measures this month after being outvoted in his final Bank of England rate-setting meeting.

Minutes of the monetary policy committee (MPC) confirmed that the governor bowed out with one last call for another £25bn of quantitative easing (QE), with colleagues Paul Fisher and David Miles joining him once more.

They believed the case to expand QE to £400bn remained "compelling" as recovery prospects were still only modest despite recent encouraging economic news, and warned about the risk of fresh turmoil in the eurozone, according to the minutes.

But they remained outvoted six to three as the majority of the MPC opted to keep QE on hold at £375bn, arguing that the recovery was already taking hold following "striking" surveys from the construction, manufacturing and services sectors for May.

The meeting was King's 194th and capped 16 years of rate-setting at the Bank as he prepares to hand over the reins to his successor Mark Carney on 1 July.

A majority of high net worth individuals (HNWIs) in the Middle East believe wealth creation is faster today than in the past, more than any other region globally, according to the latest report by of Barclays Wealth Insights.

Over half (60%) of respondents in the Middle East agreed that wealth can be created faster today than in the past, in comparison to 43 per cent in Europe and 31 per cent in North America.

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Abu Dhabi’s rising livestock and dairy industry, which is part of the agriculture sector has shown substantial business activity in the last year showing the strides made and in the sector which has huge potential to achieve food security.

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Deputy speaker is informed he faces additional allegations as he answers bail after initial arrest last month

Nigel Evans, the House of Commons deputy speaker already under arrest for alleged rape and sexual assault, has been arrested on suspicion of three further counts of indecent assault, it has emerged.

The MP for Ribble Valley, 55, answered bail following his initial arrests in May, and was informed that he faced the additional allegations.

A Lancashire Constabulary spokesman said: "A 55-year-old man from Pendleton in Lancashire has today answered his bail following his arrest in May on suspicion of rape and sexual assault.

"He has subsequently been further arrested on suspicion of three further offences of indecent assault. He will be interviewed about these allegations at a police station in Lancashire during the course of the day."

Evans was initially arrested in May following allegations that he raped one man and sexually assaulted another between 2009 and 2013 – accusations he said were "completely false".

A third person later gave a statement to Lancashire Constabulary claiming he too had been sexually assaulted.

After his arrest on 4 May Evans, 55, read a statement outside his Lancashire home vehemently denying the accusations against him after he was released on bail earlier this month.

The senior Tory spoke of his incredulity after being arrested over allegations by two men he had until then "regarded as friends".

Evans, who came out as gay in 2010, said he had just endured "the worst 24 hours of my life".

At the time of his arrest he said: "The allegations are completely false and I can't understand why they have been made, especially as I have continued to socialise with one [of the complainants] as recently as last week.

"I appreciate the way the police have handled this in such a sensitive manner, and I'd like to thank my colleagues, friends and members of the public who have expressed their support and – like me – a sense of incredulity at these events."

The Guardian disclosed last month that detectives were planning to interview a fourth alleged victim of Evans who claimed that he was intimately groped by the deputy speaker in a bar in the House of Commons.

The former parliamentary intern, 22, claims he was assaulted in the Sports and Social Club bar in December 2011 even though he had never spoken to the MP and was there with his parents. Detectives have contacted the alleged victim and asked for a formal statement.

The former intern said he had just finished a stint in the House of Commons and was in the bar with his parents – he was showing them around parliament and had stopped off for a drink – when the alleged incident occurred. Evans, it is claimed, stood with his back to the former intern and groped his bottom for around a minute.

A spokesman for Evans said about the alleged assault: "Mr Evans is unaware of the complaint and vigorously denies any wrongdoing."

The Speaker's office has previously released a statement saying that, while Evans will remain deputy speaker, he will not resume chairing duties while police investigations continue.

PORTLAND, Maine — Four chefs from high-end hotels in South Korea are continuing their visit to Maine to learn about lobsters.

During their five-day visit that began Monday, the chefs are getting a hands-on education about Maine's signature seafood by going out on a lobster boat, touring processing plants and attending a lobster-cooking class and an industry meeting.

The program is a joint effort between the Maine Lobster Promotion Council and Calendar Islands Maine Lobster, with support from lobster dealers and processors.

Teacher education programs at two local colleges scored poorly in a new ratings report from a national teacher quality group.

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Over-by-over report: Can England secure a spot in the Champions Trophy final? Find out here

The Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company or Masdar in association with the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD) has launched a six-megawatt, eight-turbine wind farm in the Republic of Seychelles. The project was developed by Masdar and funded by ADFD.

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A loud explosion has hit a military site in the Syrian port city of Latakia, according to State and opposition media, Aljazeera reported.

Explosion in the Mediterranean town, a government stronghold, have been rare throughout the Syrian conflict.

State television said that six people were wounded by a blast was caused by a technical fault at a weapons store at a military engineering base.

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Rising rents and low wage growth mean young people face challenging choices before buying homes, says charity Shelter

Families and single people in England will need to save for more than a decade to raise a large enough deposit to buy a home of their own, as rising rents and low wage growth have "moved the goalposts" for first-time buyers, according to research commissioned by the housing charity Shelter.

A shortage of affordable homes means today's young people face life-changing choices between starting a family or buying a home, even if they worked hard and saved as much as they can each month, Shelter said.While couples in the north-east might be able to afford to buy after four-and-a-half years, it said singletons in London would have to commit to almost 30 years of saving to build up the deposit they needed for an average first-time buyer property.

Models prepared for Shelter by housing economist Fionnuala Earley using official figures showed that a couple earning average salaries who put aside a fifth of their income each month after living costs would take six-and-a-half years to afford a 20% deposit on the average £139,920 property bought by first-time buyers. Although mortgages are available for those with smaller deposits, this was the typical figure put down by first-time buyers in 2012.

Lower house prices meant the time taken to raise a 20% deposit was shorter in parts of the north of England - four-and-a-half years, where Shelter said would-be buyers needed to save for four-and-a-half years. In London, where the average first-time buyer property costs £278,417, couples need to save for 10.5 years, while singletons face a 30-year slog.

While couples faced the shortest wait before they could afford somewhere, once they had a child and took on associated costs of childcare, building up a deposit became difficult. Working on the basis of a fifth of discretionary income going into savings, the researchers showed a family could typically put by just £54 a month, against £290 for a couple with no children. As a result, even buying the same kind of first-time buyer property would take much longer. Across England, the average number of years saving was put at 11.8 years, while in London it reached 20.5 years. In other parts of the south-east it came in at 13 years.

Shelter's chief executive, Campbell Robb, said the figures revealed "the harsh realities that 'generation rent' is having to confront because of our shortage of affordable homes".He said: "Imagine a 28-year-old couple weighing up their options: they can save for a home now and put off starting a family until they're 35, or they can start a family now but accept they'll be renting until their child is a teenager.

"Meanwhile, single people face an added pressure to either find a partner or to live with their parents well into their 30s if they're ever to have a hope of saving enough for a deposit."

The government has made attempts to increase the availability of 95% loans, launching the Funding for Lending Scheme in summer 2012 and Help to Buy in April 2013. However, experts have warned that the latest scheme could stoke a housing bubble, which could put prices even further out of reach for many buyers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Qatar Exchange has announced the introduction of government bonds issued by the Qatar Central Bank for trading on the exchange, which will commence on 20 June 2013, in a step that supports the development of the financial market in the State of Qatar on the one hand and diversification of investment tools available for banks, institutions and investors on the other.

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Tamarod has gathered more than 15 million petition signatures demanding President Mohamed Morsi’s resignation and calling for early presidential elections, a leader from the opposition campaign said on Tuesday.

Tamarod had originally set a target of 15 million signatories to call on Morsi to step down.

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Hotels in Dubai have reduced room rates between 25 and 30 per cent to attract visitors during the slow summer season, according to industry experts.

“The summer months have traditionally attracted less tourists to the emirates compared to other months because of the hot weather,” says Christopher Hewett, senior consultant at TRI Hospitality Consulting.

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Barbra Streisand, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton are among the guests at the 90th birthday of Israel's president, Shimon Peres

DEDHAM -- A Stoughton man who fatally shot a rival through a window as the victim lay in bed has been convicted of second-degree murder.

Michael Blanchard was convicted Tuesday in Norfolk Superior Court of killing 21-year-old Stephen Erving at about 3:30 a.m. on March 16, 2010.

Prosecutors say the 24 -year-old Blanchard fired several rounds from a 9 mm pistol through Erving's first-floor bedroom window.

Authorities say the men knew each other and had a long-running feud.

While Asian nations pour cash into promoting culture, the UK is slashing budgets. We shouldn't take our position for granted

Like good health, soft power is something you only really appreciate in its absence. Last year, the outgoing Chinese president, Hu Jintao, wrote an essay bemoaning his country's poor performance in the cultural arms race. "We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of westernising and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration," he wrote, somewhat dramatically, adding "the international culture of the west is strong while we are weak."

Hu's words can be found in a new report from the British Council, Influence and Attraction: Culture and the Race for Soft Power in the 21st Century, which uses Asia's obsession with extending to warn against British complacency. "The word 'soft' implies 'less effective' and 'less important'," the report suggests. "That is not the reality, and is certainly not how cultural relations are seen in the east."

Over the last few years, China has attempted to salve its soft power angst with hard cash, pouring money and manpower into the movie industry, the culture-promoting Confucius Institute and the foreign-language output of state broadcaster CCTV. At the same time, the austerity-fixated UK government has slashed funding for the British Council and World Service, abolished the UK Film Council, and generally shown little enthusiasm for the arts.

Last year, Monocle magazine's annual soft power survey placed Britain in the top spot, overtaking the US largely thanks to the Olympics and its opening ceremony, but the current government's lukewarm attitude does not bode well. As the foreign affairs committee reported last year, the "spending review 2010 may turn out to have had a very damaging effect on the [Foreign & Commonwealth Office's] ability to promote and safeguard UK interests overseas".

Soft power was defined by Harvard University's Joseph Nye in 1990 as "the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than through coercion", and culture is a key plank. The extent of its impact can be hard to measure but some benefits, at least, are indisputable. As well as being lucrative exports in their own right, thriving creative industries make a country more attractive to foreign tourists, students and investors, while oiling the wheels of trade and diplomacy.

In exceptional cases, soft power can rebrand a nation. Since the late 90s, a new wave of South Korean culture, called hallyu, has transformed the country's standing in Asia to such an extent that the foreign ministry talks of "hallyu diplomacy". Exported TV dramas such as Jumong, and K-pop hits such as Gangnam Style have done more for the country's soft power than any number of heavy-handed marketing campaigns. According to the New Yorker: "Hallyu has erased South Korea's regional reputation as a brutish emerging industrial nation where everything smelled of garlic and kimchi, and replaced it with images of prosperous, cosmopolitan life." Or consider tiny Jamaica, which, from Bob Marley to Usain Bolt, has been punching above its economic and military weight for decades.

Soft power is an unpredictable commodity that can't be bought in a hurry. China imposes a quota of 34 foreign movies a year but last year those imports outgrossed China's 893 homegrown productions, to the government's evident annoyance. Overseas consumers can't be blinded to a nation's flaws. When one of your most famous cultural exports, Ai Weiwei, is a tireless critic of the government, it's hard to pretend you're an artistic paradise, however much you spend.

Britain has long enjoyed the cultural reach that China craves, but it's taking its enviable position for granted. Perhaps when you're the land of Bond, the Bard and the Beatles, not to mention the English language, you're prone to assuming it will be ever thus, but it's not just austerity that threatens Britain's soft power. Many elements of Conservative dogma are antithetical to it: resistance to immigration and Europe; suspicion of the BBC and state funding in general; and contempt for any area of the arts on which you can't immediately slap a price tag.

The British Council report rightly argues for a "move from short-term transactional and instrumental thinking to long-term relationship building". And if we must play the price-tag game, economists point out that growing demand for popular culture from newly prosperous nations plays to Britain's strengths.

Measuring the worth of culture using purely utilitarian arithmetic is a tricky path. Art should be valued on its own merits as well as for its financial rewards. But the government need only look at the global success of the Olympics opening ceremony or The King's Speech, one of the last movies to receive UK Film Council funding, to appreciate what the right combination of long-term state investment and individual creativity can do for Britain's reputation abroad, for relatively piffling sums. That, surely, is a language that even the most fanatical budget hawks can understand.

Soldiers abroad are protected by human rights law, says court in case of men killed when poorly armoured vehicles were bombed

Soldiers going into battle abroad are protected by human rights legislation, the supreme court has ruled in a landmark judgment.

The decision by the UK's highest court will have far-reaching implications for the way the Ministry of Defence (MoD) must care for troops and conduct future military campaigns.

Cases were brought by the families of three men killed in Iraq when their poorly armoured Snatch Land Rovers were destroyed by roadside bombs.

Lee Ellis, Phillip Hewett and Kirk Redpath died as a result of such attacks between 2005 and 2007.

Other claims were bought by the families of those killed and injured in a Challenger tank as a result of a friendly fire incident.

The supreme court considered several issues including:

• Whether British soldiers killed during military operations abroad were, at the time of their deaths, within the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom for the purposes of article 1 of the European convention on human rights;

• Whether complaints of negligence are covered by the doctrine of combat immunity or whether it would fair, just and reasonable to impose a duty of care on the MoD in the circumstances of the case.

The individual claims brought by the families can now be brought to trial. The cases can be based on both negligence and human rights.

Jocelyn Cockburn, the solicitor who represented Susan Smith, the mother of Hewett, said: "It is fantastic that the supreme court has at last recognised that our armed forces are within the control and authority of UK authorities at all times and therefore within the UK's jurisdiction including when deployed abroad."

Outside the court, Smith said: "We have won at last. To be honest we didn't expect to. The MoD will now have to make sure our soldiers are safe abroad.

"What we have done now will make a lot of difference to people in the future. There will have to be protection in place.

"Phillip is dead. Nothing is going to bring him back. But there are other boys out there. We don't understand why the MoD didn't just admit they got it wrong years ago."

Philip Redpath, whose son Kirk died in Iraq, said: "The MoD and army have a duty of care to supply the right equipment. Without that, they could give a soldier a broomstick and that would be OK."

Cockburn, a solicitor with the law firm Hodges, Jones and Allen, added: "What has been established is that soldiers do have human rights and remain within the jurisdiction of the UK when abroad. Whether there has been a breach of those rights is a different question."

A decision at the European court of human rights in 2011 on the al-Skeini case, which concerned Iraqi civilians who died within areas under British military control, set a powerful precedent. If Iraqi civilians were deemed to have human rights and be under UK jurisdiction, lawyers for the soldiers' families argued, then the troops themselves should not be denied such legal protection.