Tennis

Federer will warm up at Kooyong

The world No 2 Roger Federer will join the former Australian Open champion Marat Safin and the 2006 finalist Marcos Baghdatis in the eight-man Kooyong invitational tournament.

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MELBOURNE // The world No 2 Roger Federer will join the former Australian Open champion Marat Safin and the 2006 finalist Marcos Baghdatis in the eight-man Kooyong invitational tournament the week before January's first Grand Slam of 2009. Federer missed this year's Kooyong event this year with a stomach virus, and lost in the semi-finals at the Australian Open to Novak Djokovic. Federer went on to lose his No 1 ranking to Rafael Nadal after the Spaniard beat him in the French Open and Wimbledon finals.

Safin won the Australian Open in 2005. The others confirmed to play at Kooyong - the former home of the Australian Open before it moved to Melbourne Park - from Jan 14-17, are the Swiss Stanislas Wawrinka, the American James Blake, the Beijing Games silver medalist Fernando Gonzalez of Chile and Latvian Ernests Gulbis. The eighth player will be named later, the tournament director Colin Stubs said.

The tournament attracts top players by offering guaranteed matches in the round-robin format ahead of the Australian Open rather than the risk of elimination in other lead-up tournaments. Stubs said yesterday that he believes Nadal plans to rest the week before the Australian Open, which runs from Jan 19-Feb 1. "At the moment Nadal is probably going to do that although he's got a fairly good reason, he's got some bad knee problems and he doesn't want to extend himself physically a week before a Grand Slam, which is fair enough," Stubs said.

* AP

Essentials
The flights: You can fly from the UAE to Iceland with one stop in Europe with a variety of airlines. Return flights with Emirates from Dubai to Stockholm, then Icelandair to Reykjavik, cost from Dh4,153 return. The whole trip takes 11 hours. British Airways flies from Abu Dhabi and Dubai to Reykjavik, via London, with return flights taking 12 hours and costing from Dh2,490 return, including taxes. 
The activities: A half-day Silfra snorkelling trip costs 14,990 Icelandic kronur (Dh544) with Dive.is. Inside the Volcano also takes half a day and costs 42,000 kronur (Dh1,524). The Jokulsarlon small-boat cruise lasts about an hour and costs 9,800 kronur (Dh356). Into the Glacier costs 19,500 kronur (Dh708). It lasts three to four hours.
The tours: It’s often better to book a tailor-made trip through a specialist operator. UK-based Discover the World offers seven nights, self-driving, across the island from £892 (Dh4,505) per person. This includes three nights’ accommodation at Hotel Husafell near Into the Glacier, two nights at Hotel Ranga and two nights at the Icelandair Hotel Klaustur. It includes car rental, plus an iPad with itinerary and tourist information pre-loaded onto it, while activities can be booked as optional extras. More information inspiredbyiceland.com

Inside Palestine-Israel
Know your cyber adversaries

Cryptojacking: Compromises a device or network to mine cryptocurrencies without an organisation's knowledge.

Distributed denial-of-service: Floods systems, servers or networks with information, effectively blocking them.

Man-in-the-middle attack: Intercepts two-way communication to obtain information, spy on participants or alter the outcome.

Malware: Installs itself in a network when a user clicks on a compromised link or email attachment.

Phishing: Aims to secure personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.

Ransomware: Encrypts user data, denying access and demands a payment to decrypt it.

Spyware: Collects information without the user's knowledge, which is then passed on to bad actors.

Trojans: Create a backdoor into systems, which becomes a point of entry for an attack.

Viruses: Infect applications in a system and replicate themselves as they go, just like their biological counterparts.

Worms: Send copies of themselves to other users or contacts. They don't attack the system, but they overload it.

Zero-day exploit: Exploits a vulnerability in software before a fix is found.

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Test squad against Afghanistan: Rahane (c), Dhawan, Vijay, Rahul, Pujara, Karun, Saha, Ashwin, Jadeja, Kuldeep, Umesh, Shami, Pandya, Ishant, Thakur.

T20 squad against Ireland and England: Kohli (c), Dhawan, Rohit, Rahul, Raina, Pandey, Dhoni, Karthik, Chahal, Kuldeep, Sundar, Bhuvneshwar, Bumrah, Pandya, Kaul, Umesh.

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