Bestajman

Dancers in a Dubai hotel. Photograph: Rex Features The bosomy blonde in a tight, low-cut evening dress slid on to a barstool next to me and began the chat: Where are you from? How long are you here? Where are you staying? I asked her what she did for a living. "You know what I do," she replied. "I'm a whore." As I looked around the designer bar on the second floor of the glitzy five-star hotel, it was obvious that every woman in the place was a prostitute. And the men were all potential punters, or at least window-shoppers. Why Dubai's Islamic austerity is a sham – sex is for sale in every bar | World news | The Observer

Mohammed Al Fayed has sold London department store Harrods to the Qatari royal family's investment company for a reported £1.5bn ($2.3bn). The Egypt-born tycoon acquired the business in Knightsbridge following a £615m takeover in 1985. Ken Costa, an adviser to the deal with Qatar Holdings, said Mr Al Fayed was retiring "to spend more time with his children and grandchildren". He will continue to promote the store in the role of honorary chairman. But Mr Al Fayed will not be involved in running the company on a day-to-day basis QATAR HOLDING Investment arm of the emirate's sovereign wealth fund, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) Parent company's estimated assets more than £40.5bn Sold around £1.4bn of shares in Barclays bank last October Failed in bid for Sainsbury's in 2007 Third-largest shareholder in car-maker VW and has stake in Porsche BBC News - Mohammed Al Fayed sells Harrods store to Qatar Holdings Harrods

Arab nations are leading a "historic" charge to make the world wide web live up to its name. Net regulator Icann has switched on a system that allows full web addresses that contain no Latin characters. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the first countries to have so-called "country codes" written in Arabic scripts. The first country codes: Egypt: مصر Saudi Arabia: السعودية United Arab Emirates: امارات BBC News - 'Historic' day as first non-latin web addresses go live