"ridesharing.ae hopes to let people traveling the same route everyday to find each other. Those who offer a ride or looking for rides post their information to the site, where it becomes easily searchable by other visitors. You provide as much information as you want and your privacy is protected."
"“You!” he hollered, wagging his accusing finger in my face. “You are driving. You are not having the licence. Maybe you are going for jail.”
My daughter, then five years old, began crying for fear her mother would be incarcerated, only making the officer angrier.
“Why she is crying? Make her to stop!” he hissed."
Gerard said routing an entire country's traffic _ even that of a tiny nation like Qatar _ through a single IP address is unusual. He said Wikipedia is looking for a way to refine its capabilities to block problem individual users in the Gulf state without hamstringing the entire country.None of that could occur here of course.
. . .
Administrators reversed the block once they discovered the scope.
"Our apologies to the people of Qatar," Gerard said on Wednesday. "It was a mistake. We won't do it again _ unless somebody slips up, in which case it will be remedied quickly."
. . .
Wikipedia administrators had responded to an unusually high level of spam and fraudulent posts by blocking contributions from the numeric Internet address tied to those posts.
But that resulted in the accidental blocking of the entire nation because Qatar's sole telecom, Q-Tel, funnels all Internet traffic through that single address, a practice that allows the country to monitor and censor its users, said David Gerard, Wikipedia's London-based spokesman.
"It boggles the mind how many Lagoons-style projects are under way in Dubai," says Bill Kistler, president of Urban Land Institute in Europe, a nonprofit real-estate research institute based in Washington, D.C. "Dubai wants to become the Singapore of the region and they're well on the way to doing that."The Emirates Economist has more on Dubai from Mr. Kistler.
Other projects include Dubai Waterfront, a beachfront project larger than Manhattan being developed by local developer Nakheel LLC which is partially state-owned. Nearby is Dubailand, a three billion square-foot entertainment and leisure project being managed by the government's Dubai Development & Investment Authority. Many of the attractions are expected to open in 2008.
Instability elsewhere in the Middle East has helped attract businesses and tourists to Dubai, says Mr. Kistler. If the Middle East stabilizes, Dubai could lose business to other fast-growing emirates, such as Abu Dhabi, he says. The United Arab Emirates has grown to become a significant international business center in recent years due to its reputation for being one of the most successful and stable nations in the Arab world, as well as one of the most liberal. (Each emirate is controlled by a ruling family.) However, says Mr. Kistler, "whether there is an appetite to fill all of these new offices and apartments remains to be proved."
"You have to look at Dubai with different optics because of the sheer scale of development. They're building for the next generation," says Urban Land Institute's Mr. Kistler. "I went to visit one Dubai developer recently and it was like a Harrods' sale, there were so many people. I thought perhaps that a tour bus had just come in, but apparently this was just a typical day in their sales office."
"H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, in his capacity as Ruler of Dubai, has issued a decree on rent allowance in the Emirate of Dubai.
The new rent allowance was decided after taking into consideration Decree no. 2 of 1993 and its amendments, which set up a special committee to look into and settle disputes between landlords and tenants, and Decree no. 14 of 2005 which set a ceiling for any rent increase in the emirate.
According to the new decree, rent allowance shall not exceed 7% of the annual rent charge of the property. This shall apply to all rent contracts that are to be renewed in 2007 on condition that no rent increment was made on that property in 2006.
No rent allowance increment shall be made in 2007 on properties whose contract had already been signed in 2006, Article 2 of the new decree said.
The decree tasked the special judiciary committee in charge of settling disputes between landlords and tenants to come up with the appropriate measures for the implementation of the new decree, which takes effect from the date of its issuance, January 1, 2007 and is to be published in the official gazette."
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