Sheep sold for Dh75,000 near Dubai

A Saudi farmer paid Dh75,000 for a male sheep owned by an Emirati man during a livestock auction held near the eastern oasis town of Al Ain.

Abdul Rahman Al Arouk bought the Najdi ram from Abdullah Al Nasiri, who said the animal is one of the best sheep species in the Arabian Peninsula.

The deal was struck at a sheep auction which is held regularly near Al Ain and attracts a large number of livestock owners from the UAE and other Gulf states.

Two female sheep were also sold for Dh60,000 while an Emirati farmer, Sultan Al Rasheedi, rejected an offer to sell his ram, Zilzal (tremor), for Dh51,000.

According to the semi official Arabic language daily Alittihad, eight sheep were sold in Saturday’s action for a total Dh205,000.

“I first hesitated in selling my ram for Dh75,000…I kept thinking for two days, after which I decided to accept that offer,” Nasiri said. “I am very upset to have sold it because it will be taken out of the UAE.”

Qatar named world's richest country by Forbes

Qatar has been ranked as the world's wealthiest country in a list compiled by the US magazine Forbes.

The Gulf State with a population of 1.7 million topped the list as the world's richest country per capita, thanks to a rebound in oil prices and its massive natural gas reserves.

Adjusted for purchasing power, Qatar booked an estimated gross domestic product per capita of more than USD 88,000 for 2010, Forbes said, compared with USD 47,500 for the UAE, which was placed sixth while Kuwait stood at 15th in the list.

Qatar, which will host the 2022 Football World Cup and is also in the running for the 2020 Olympic Games, has been a high-profile investor in recent times.

The government is pouring money into infrastructure, including a deepwater seaport, an airport and a railway network, all with an eye to making the country a better host for businesses and the 2022 World Cup, Forbes said.

In second place on the list was Luxembourg, with a per capita GDP on a purchasing-power parity basis of just over USD 81,000.

In third place was Singapore, which thrives as a technology, manufacturing and finance hub with a GDP (PPP) per capita of nearly USD 56,700.

To rank the countries, Forbes said it looked at GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power for 182 nations.

It used International Monetary Fund data from 2010. Norway and Brunei rounded out the top five positions in the list followed by the UAE, the US, Hong Kong, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Petrol may become 60% cheaper in the UAE

In a welcome change, petrol in the UAE could become cheaper by up to 60 per cent as the Federal National Council (FNC) yesterday called for prices to be brought in line with other Gulf peers, which boast of some of the cheapest petrol prices in the world.

The FNC has decided to form a temporary six-member committee to consider the implications of further subsidizing petrol prices in the country to bring it in line with its neighbours.

However, the debate to potentially reduce the prices was opposed by the UAE’s Minister of Energy, Mohamed bin Dhaen Al Hamili, who argued that the country’s retail petrol prices are already subsidized by the government to the tune of Dh1.20 per litre.

This would suggest that, without government support, retail petrol prices would escalate to Dh2.92 per litre compared with the current price of Dh1.72 per litre.

However, FNC member Ahmed Al Za’abi maintained that other Gulf countries retail petrol at much cheaper prices. A litre of petrol retails for an equivalent of 68 fils (Dh0.68) in Saudi Arabia, which is one of the cheapest nations in the world for buying petrol. Brinnging the UAE's retail petrol price at a par with Saudi Arabia's would entail a 60 per cent reduction in the price at the pump.

On the other hand, GCC peer Bahrain, which has much smaller oil reserves than the UAE, retails petrol at 75 fils per litre, less than half of what it is sold in the UAE. While Kuwait retails a litre of black gold for 81 fils, in Qatar a litre of petrol costs 87 fils. Even Oman, which is a bit steeper at Dh1.16 per litre, makes it into the Top 10 Nations for Cheapest Petrol Prices even as UAE does not feature in those rankings.

According to Arabic daily Emarat Al Youm, Al Za’abi stressed that “the UAE citizen has the right to obtain petroleum products at a price that Gulf citizen gets it, even in countries that have limited production of petrol.”

He added that the higher prices of petrol “reflect negatively on the rest of the prices of products and services which are detriment to economic development.”

The minister, however, countered by saying that losses of the four fuel distribution companies emanating from a subsidized petrol price reached Dh8.5 billion in 2011 while the expected losses this year were Dh12 billion.

Emarat Al Youm reported this morning that Mohammed Ahmed Al Murr, the speaker of the FNC, said that any reduction in petrol prices would benefit everyone and not just the locals. “The Emiratis are a minority and that there is a majority of the population will benefit from the proposal.”

Some members of the FNC called to limit such recommendations to Emiratis only, while others called for making it public support, due to the reversal of oil prices on the prices of all products and services, and ended the discussion to agree on forming a committee to study support.

Retirement Is A Thing Of The Past?

Historically, once you’re fully eligible for social security and pension benefits—or just 65 and tired of the job—you exit the workforce and enjoy retirement in USA. But those days may be over, according to a recent study.

Most (57%) of the 800 surveyed workers age 60 and up said they would look for another gig after retiring from their current jobs.

“There are several reasons why more mature workers are delaying or foregoing retirement,” says Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder. “There have always been the retirees who pick up part-time jobs because they enjoy working as a means of fulfillment. However, when you combine those perpetual workers with ones who have to continue working to hold onto benefits, rebuild retirement savings lost in the recession, or earn supplemental income to make ends meet, the notion of retirement is completely different now from five years ago.”

When workers were asked how soon they thought they could retire from their current jobs, 11% said they didn’t think they’d ever be able to stop working!

Haefner says she’s seeing more people move away from the traditional definition of retirement and instead seek “rehirement.”

“‘Rehirement’ is a term that has been around for a while, but it speaks to the fact that the traditional, ideal notion of retirement–work hard for four decades and kick up your feet with no worries–isn’t in the cards for a majority of American workers,” she says. “More than half of people currently age 60-plus will have to continue working in some capacity for years after their official retirement, and one in 10 don’t think they’ll ever be able to retire.”

Retinal Implant May Bring Eyesight To The Blind

Approximately  200,000 people in the west suffer from retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disease that causes the slow degradation of eyesight starting from a young age, and often leads to blindness. The problem is that the genes in the eye are “programmed” to produce the wrong number of proteins that are needed for the cells. Over time, this causes the rods and cones in the eye end up dying, which is what leads to diminished and then lost eyesight.

Right now, there are no approved treatments to either restore eyesight or even slow the progression of the disease, but that may soon change as teams of researchers and companies are working on curing the condition.

One of those companies, Retina Implant, AG, has developed a new retinal implant that partially restores vision to people who’ve lost their sight to retinitis pigmentosa. A first round of human clinical trials began in 2005 and concluded in 2010. That trial showed promise. The results showed that patients who received the implant had their eyesight partially restored to the point where they could distinguish objects and shapes and even read.

The implant itself is a small electronic chip, only 9 square mm, that’s implanted directly beneath the retina. The chip contains about 1500 electrodes and are powered inductively by transmitter coils placed under the skin. When light coming into the eye hits the electrodes, the chip converts the light into electricity, which then stimulates nerves in the retina. The stimulation is then perceived by the brain as sight. This differs from other implant technologies, which rely on cameras to capture and interpret the images.

The first clinical trial only had eleven patients, but no complications arose from the procedure. By the end of the second round of clinical trials, 60 people will have tried the implant, which should provide a lot more data about its optimal use!

Italian professor challenges to Google

An Italian computer science professor whose research helped inspire Google launched a new search engine and social media network on Monday that he hopes will challenge the US technology giant.

The new site entitled ‘Volunia’ allows users to view the components of particular websites to find the subject of interest more quickly and to interact with registered users who might be looking at the same web pages.

"The web is a living place," said Massimo Marchiori, who came up with the algorithm for the Internet page ranking service ‘HyperSearch’ in the 1990s and used to teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

"There is information but there are also people. The social dimension is already present, it just has to emerge," he said in an online demonstration.

Marchiori said he believed the functions available on Volunia would soon become normal on all the major search engines including Google and Yahoo!

He has been working on the project for four years and has been praised by Italian commentators for giving up a more high-profile career in the United States to return to Italy, where his salary is 2,000 euros ($2,600) a month.

Marchiori teaches at the University of Padua in northeast Italy.

He has been quoted as saying that future Google founder Larry Page approached him after a conference in which he presented HyperSearch.

Page "was fascinated by it and asked if he could use it. Since it was not patented, he used it in the best possible way," Marchiori said.

Volunia, which has a US copyright, was only launched to selected users on Monday and will be rolled out more widely and in 12 languages including Arabic, English, Japanese and Russian over the coming days.

Organisers said they hoped to fund it by selling advertising space.