The Samurai Blue lifts the AFC Asian Cup for the fourth time after beating the Australians 1-0 at the Saturday’s final in Doha, Qatar. Substitute Tadanari Lee scored the only goal late into extra time. Official highlights from AFC…
State of Qatar
Russia & Qatar to host 2018 & 2022 FIFA World Cup
FIFA has chosen Russia to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup, while the 2022 tournament was awarded to Qatar. Official press release from FIFA…
FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter announced the result of the FIFA Executive Committee’s vote on Thursday 2 December 2010 in Zurich’s Messe.
The contenders for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, other than Russia, were England, a joint bid from Belgium and the Netherlands, and a joint bid from Spain and Portugal. Meanwhile, for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Australia, Japan, Korea Republic and the USA were competing with Qatar.
22 members of the FIFA Executive Committee were entitled to vote. 12 votes were needed for an absolute majority and therefore to obtain the right to host the FIFA World Cup. Here are the full results of the voting rounds:
2018 FIFA World Cup
Round 1: England 2 votes, Netherlands/Belgium 4 votes, Spain/Portugal 7 votes and Russia 9 votes (as no absolute majority was reached, the candidate with least amount of votes, England, was eliminated).
Round 2: Netherlands/Belgium 2, Spain/Portugal 7, and Russia 13.2022 FIFA World Cup
Round 1: Australia 1 vote, Japan 3 votes, Korea Republic 4 votes, Qatar 11 votes, USA 3 votes (Australia eliminated).
Round 2: Japan 2, Korea Republic 5, Qatar 10, and USA 5 (Japan eliminated).
Round 3: Korea Republic 5, Qatar 11, and USA 6 (Korea Republic eliminated).
Round 4: Qatar 14 votes and USA 8 votes.
Kuwait phone number sold for $745,000
A mobile phone number, 555-55555, was recently sold in Kuwait for KD210,000 (~USD745,000). The international code for Kuwait is 965 btw; give the rich folk a call whenever you are bored… if you could afford the long distant charges lol.
It’s not the world record for most expensive phone number though… the number 666-6666 was sold in Qatar for a million Qatari Riyals, or about 2.75 million US Dollars in 2006 during a charity auction.
On side note… Saudi Arabia is officially going to build the new world’s tallest building (more details later). The current world’s tallest, UAE’s Burj Khalifa, is unsurprisingly located in the oil-rich region as well.
Singapore tops Asia in competitiveness report
Singapore tops the Asian ranking in The Global Competitiveness Report 2008-2009 conducted by the World Economic Forum (and partners) using both publicly available data and the Executive Opinion Survey.
The annual report assesses the ability of countries to provide high levels of prosperity to their citizens, which in turn depends on how productively a country uses available resources. Thus, the index measures the set of institutions, policies, and factors that set the sustainable current and medium-term levels of economic prosperity.
The top 10 overall ranking are USA, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Singapore, Finland, Germany, Japan and Canada.
The top 10 Asian economic entities are Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, China and UAE.
