Well everything goes in the UAE or so they say, we saw number plates being sold for millions before and now a camel has been bought for the equivalent to $2.7 million! Those of you who are camel enthusiasts –if they indeed exist- will know of a beauty pageant strictly for camels that occurs in Abu Dhabi offering prizes for the best of the breed.
Would you feel sorry for Bill Gates now that he’s no longer the richest bloke in the world? It’s true he’s no longer the richest man according to Forbes’s 22nd annual ranking. The list includes so many names, so we’ll only focus on the top 5 to make things easy to remember. Let’s take it from the top. Holding the most coveted number one is Warren Edward Buffet from the United States of America. This man has $60.0 billion dollars in his name. A lot of people in the investment world know of this man since Buffet is an investor who owns the firms Fruit of the Loom and ice cream Dairy Queen. He is considered as the most beloved investor in America. Even though he is the son of a politician, Warren Edward Buffet delivered newspapers as a boy. He strived to make his business as good as it is today that is why he is now richer than his friend Bill Gates.
Well we all know that Dubai is the land of extravagance especially after the hefty sum the wealthy businessman paid for the No. 1 plate. However, extravagance reached an all time high when Iranian artist Farhad Moshiri’s artwork titled 'Eshgh' or ‘Love’ sold for a whopping $1.05 million as opposed to the $200,000 which was the ‘reserve’ amount. The auction took place in Dubai and a lot of records for prices of Middle Eastern artists work were set.
Out of all the simple luxuries in life I never thought car number plates would be the most expensive, however, businessman Saeed Khoury would disagree after paying $14.5 million for the number plate that held the number ‘1’! It would make sense to me if he had bought it as an investment to sell it on later for a higher price, but he says that although he is sure its value will double within the next two years he will be using it as opposed to reselling! The plate was sold at an auction in the UAE and there was a lot of hype as people waited to see if the bidding would exceed the record amount of 11 million dirham- and it did by a lot!
Obviously the perks of being a singer in the Arab world are numerous; there is the devotion of the fans, the advertising contracts and of course: the cash!
Recently Arab singers’ fortunes have been revealed by Arabian Business Magazine, that also ranked them from the richest to the ... not so rich!
Amr Diab has been Number 1 for a lot of things but now he also has the biggest fortune worth a whopping $37 million!
The singer holding the second place position has been on the scene for a much longer period of time and has had many amazing successes.
This singer is none other than Lebanese legend Fayrouz, whose fortune is worth $34 million!
According to a study conducted to calculate which channel had the highest number of viewers M.B.C had the biggest percentage of viewers over 15 years of age! But MBC’s star show was ‘Tash 15’ which gained a whopping 48.6% of viewers. This was quite expected as viewers in our day of age seem to lean more towards comedies that make them forget their problems. ‘Bab El Hara 2’ came on top of the Ramadan dramas this year but other series such as ‘Sultan El Gharam’ and ‘El Malek Farouk’ still had high numbers of viewers.
It is not often that one comes across an ancient and complete copy of the Holy Quran but some lucky fella managed to discover a 13th Century complete copy. I say lucky because this copy sold recently at open auction for over $ 2.3 million! The auction took place in London and the Quran was expected to sell for only about $ 715,000 probably because it has most significance to Muslims and there were not many of those present.
A new study published by Professor Abd Allah El Rasheed showed that 70% of the materials on Saudi Arabian teenager’s mobile phones are pornographic materials! Obviously in a country where Islam is dominant religion and where there are strict traditions and values this is atrocious. The study then focused on men arrested for harassing women by the ‘Amr Be Al Marof Wal Nahy An El Monkar’ group and their mobile phones. These men’s phones further proved the study.
Forbes revealed its annual listing of the richest Americans whose minimum net is $1.3 billion. Can you guess who got the top place? If you say Bill Gates you got that right on target! This year is already his 14th year in that position. This year Forbes disclosed that Bill Gates’ wealth amounting to $59 billion. Though in the worldwide scene, Gates has been surpassed in being the individual with the highest net-worth by Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim whose fortune is now $62.9, that’s according to Mexican Website Sentido Comun.
It’s no surprise that people have a theory that China will in fact take over the world at one point! No only can China copy anything and sell it for half the price but they make the most interesting and random products. Following the theme of random a Chinese company, Yutung, has just released the longest bus in China which is around 24.99 meters long. Merely looking at the length you can tell that this so called ‘bus’ is more like a train except it doesn’t travel on a track and instead can travel on any road.
I’m sure all of us have looked at a celebrity and wished they could live their lives of luxury and so called happiness, but a new survey about celebrities is showing us the not-so-happy side of being a celebrity. It seems that 50% of all female artists have been or are divorced in addition 6% of all female artists have canceled an engagement. It doesn’t stop there though 15% of female artists in the Arab world have surpassed the age for marriage and may have to die alone.
For a while now Nokia has been known to many as the best mobile phone brand worldwide and it seems that the numbers are reflecting this. According to research completed by Gartner a company specializing in mobile phone sales the Finnish Nokia Company managed to increase its market share to 36.9%, this may not seem like such a big number but Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson share only 37% of the market. Further number crunching showed that general mobile phone sales have gone up by 17% this year, and that sales increased to 40% in Asia.
6 Bahraini citizens were able to break the world record of Texas University in the United States in reading ... The Bahrainis broke the Texan's record with 62 hours. Their new record is 202 hours, 2 minutes and 2 seconds. Guinness' representative Laura Hugus announced that the 6 Bahrainis really broke the record.
Almost everything in this earth is being ranked, especially when it comes to the most progressive companies. Usually, the higher the rank, the more successful a certain company is. When it comes to the airports all over the world, Dubai International Airport is one of the most progressive being ranked as the world’s 10th largest based on Airports Council International. Dubai has been on the 10th spot for 12 months now and steadily going strong because of its rise in passengers, from 13,759,320 to 16,227,528, which is an awesome 18% increase. Together with this increase was the 11% upsurge in freight, with its 751,575 tones of cargo. For this year alone the strongest statistics were during January and March with 2.83 million travelers.
