Wednesday April 24: Abu Dhabi World Professional Jiu-Jitsu Championship, 11am-6pm
Thursday April 25: Abu Dhabi World Professional Jiu-Jitsu Championship, 11am-5pm
Friday April 26: Finals, 3-6pm
Saturday April 27: Awards ceremony, 4pm and 8pm
Gabrieli Pessanha is the new female sensation of jiu-jitsu and is looking to cement that status at the Abu Dhabi World Professional Jiu-Jitsu Championship 2019.
The 18-year-old Brazilian is undefeated in 18 fights in eight competitions this season. Pessanha won gold medals at all five UAE Jiu-Jitsu Federation (UAEJJF) Grand Slams leading up to the World Pro, in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Abu Dhabi and London, and tops the ranking charts on 1,420, 80 ahead of her closest challenger Mayssa Bastos also from Brazil.
A sixth gold of the campaign, in her 90-kilogram brown/black belt division, in Abu Dhabi will see her crowned world champion.
“I really can’t wait for this championship. I go to sleep thinking about it and I wake up thinking about it,” Pessanha told the UAEJJF's website.
Pessanha meets Australian Shantelle Thompson in her opening match at the Mubadala Arena and Finn Jonna Konivouru, who has drawn a bye, in the next.
Pessanha’s rise to stardom in the martial art has been remarkable since winning every major tournament, both in the weight and absolute divisions, in the purple belt in 2017.
Raised in the notorious favela of Cidade de Deus in Rio de Janeiro, a neighbourhood made famous in the movie City of God, Pessanha credits jiu-jitsu with helping her lead a better life.
“I have gone through a lot of in jiu-jitsu and it has all made me not only a better athlete, but also a better person, that is the beauty of our sport,” she said.
“I’m looking forward to getting into the arena and doing what I love. The World Pro is one of the biggest championships in the world of jiu-jitsu.
“The UAEJJF has created opportunities for the athletes to not only dream but live the dream of being a champion. This year will be my first time participating at the championship and I hope to do what I do the best, that is competing.”
Pessanha may top the rankings but with compatriot Bastos breathing down her neck cannot afford slip-ups.
“For me, the World Pro is one of the most important events of the year,” said Bastos, 21, who competes in the brown/black 49kg division.
The race to be crowned men’s world champion title is a four-horse race: Brazil's Gabriel De Sousa tops the chart with 1,220, followed by compatriot Diego Ramalho (1,200). Ricardo Evangelista another Brazilian, is level with Poland’s Ivan Wardzinski on 1,040.
All four fighters are competing in different weight divisions: De Sousa in the 62 kilograms; Ramalho is in the 77kg; Wardzinski in the 94kg; and the Abu Dhabi-based Evangelista in the 110kg.
Four-hundred points are awarded to the winner of each weight division, 320 for second place, 240 for third and 200 for fourth.
The Abu Dhabi World Pro runs until Saturday.
Premier League results
Saturday
Tottenham Hotspur 1 Arsenal 1
Bournemouth 0 Manchester City 1
Brighton & Hove Albion 1 Huddersfield Town 0
Burnley 1 Crystal Palace 3
Manchester United 3 Southampton 2
Wolverhampton Wanderers 2 Cardiff City 0
West Ham United 2 Newcastle United 0
Sunday
Watford 2 Leicester City 1
Fulham 1 Chelsea 2
Everton 0 Liverpool 0
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Exhchange traded funds are bought and sold like shares, but operate as index-tracking funds, passively following their chosen indices, such as the S&P 500, FTSE 100 and the FTSE All World, plus a vast range of smaller exchanges and commodities, such as gold, silver, copper sugar, coffee and oil.
ETFs have zero upfront fees and annual charges as low as 0.07 per cent a year, which means you get to keep more of your returns, as actively managed funds can charge as much as 1.5 per cent a year.
There are thousands to choose from, with the five biggest providers BlackRock’s iShares range, Vanguard, State Street Global Advisors SPDR ETFs, Deutsche Bank AWM X-trackers and Invesco PowerShares.
Founded 50 years ago as a nuclear research institute, scientists at the centre believed nuclear would be the “solution for everything”.
Although they still do, they discovered in 1955 that the Netherlands had a lot of natural gas. “We still had the idea that, by 2000, it would all be nuclear,” said Harm Jeeninga, director of business and programme development at the centre.
"In the 1990s, we found out about global warming so we focused on energy savings and tackling the greenhouse gas effect.”
The energy centre’s research focuses on biomass, energy efficiency, the environment, wind and solar, as well as energy engineering and socio-economic research.
Best bowling figures: 6-14 – Sohail Tanvir (for Rajasthan Royals against Chennai Super Kings in 2008)
Best average: 16.36 – Andrew Tye
Best economy rate: 6.53 – Sunil Narine
Best strike-rate: 12.83 – Andrew Tye
Best strike-rate in an innings: 1.50 – Suresh Raina (for Chennai Super Kings against Rajasthan Royals in 2011)
Most runs conceded in an innings: 70 – Basil Thampi (for Sunrisers Hyderabad against Royal Challengers Bangalore in 2018)
Most hat-tricks: 3 – Amit Mishra
Most dot-balls: 1,128 – Harbhajan Singh
Most maiden overs bowled: 14 – Praveen Kumar
Most four-wicket hauls: 6 – Sunil Narine
Email sent to Uber team from chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi
From: Dara
To: Team@
Date: March 25, 2019 at 11:45pm PT
Subj: Accelerating in the Middle East
Five years ago, Uber launched in the Middle East. It was the start of an incredible journey, with millions of riders and drivers finding new ways to move and work in a dynamic region that’s become so important to Uber. Now Pakistan is one of our fastest-growing markets in the world, women are driving with Uber across Saudi Arabia, and we chose Cairo to launch our first Uber Bus product late last year.
Today we are taking the next step in this journey—well, it’s more like a leap, and a big one: in a few minutes, we’ll announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Careem. Importantly, we intend to operate Careem independently, under the leadership of co-founder and current CEO Mudassir Sheikha. I’ve gotten to know both co-founders, Mudassir and Magnus Olsson, and what they have built is truly extraordinary. They are first-class entrepreneurs who share our platform vision and, like us, have launched a wide range of products—from digital payments to food delivery—to serve consumers.
I expect many of you will ask how we arrived at this structure, meaning allowing Careem to maintain an independent brand and operate separately. After careful consideration, we decided that this framework has the advantage of letting us build new products and try new ideas across not one, but two, strong brands, with strong operators within each. Over time, by integrating parts of our networks, we can operate more efficiently, achieve even lower wait times, expand new products like high-capacity vehicles and payments, and quicken the already remarkable pace of innovation in the region.
This acquisition is subject to regulatory approval in various countries, which we don’t expect before Q1 2020. Until then, nothing changes. And since both companies will continue to largely operate separately after the acquisition, very little will change in either teams’ day-to-day operations post-close. Today’s news is a testament to the incredible business our team has worked so hard to build.
It’s a great day for the Middle East, for the region’s thriving tech sector, for Careem, and for Uber.
Uber on,
Dara
Match info
Champions League quarter-final, first leg
Liverpool v Porto, Tuesday, 11pm (UAE)
Matches can be watched on BeIN Sports
How to turn your property into a holiday home
Ensure decoration and styling – and portal photography – quality is high to achieve maximum rates.
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Check your management company has a physical office, a valid DTCM licence and is licencing your property and paying tourism taxes. For transparency, regularly view your booking calendar.
