On July 4, the first two musical acts were announced for the Yasalam After-Race Concerts at the 2017 Formula 1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi. This year’s acts are American singer Pink and Scottish DJ and producer Calvin Harris — past years have attracted performers such as Barbadian singer Rihanna and the British band Blur.

The event will take place from Thursday Nov. 23 to Sunday Nov. 26 and will see a musical act each night. Calvin Harris will perform on Thursday and Pink on Sunday, while the musical acts for Friday and Saturday have yet to be announced. Tickets to the Formula 1 event are needed to attend the concerts and can be found here.

The Beyond The Track event, hosted at the du Forum, will happen on the same weekend. The performers for this event are Dutch DJs Martin Garrix and Tiësto and British DJ Carl Cox. Tickets for this event are separate from the Formula 1 tickets and can be found here.

In early June 2017, emails from Yousef al-Otaiba, UAE Ambassador to the U.S. and 2016 NYU Abu Dhabi Commencement Speaker, were leaked to Huffington Post, the Daily Beast and other news outlets. The hacker group called GlobalLeaks reportedly first approached the Daily Beast with a sample of messages, claiming to show “how a small rich country/company used lobbyists to hurt American interests and those of it allies”.

The news publications that received the leaks were contacted via a Russian email address, suggesting that those responsible for the hacking were Russian. However, considering the recent [diplomatic crisis in the Gulf Cooperation Council](insert hyperlink to TG rundown of Qatar crisis), it has been suggested that Qatar may have orchestrated the leaks.

On Aug. 4, the Dubai Torch Tower, one of the world’s tallest residential buildings, caught fire. There were no casualties and no serious injuries in the fire. The tower had caught fire previously in 2015. Since then, amendments have been made to the Dubai fire code, requiring regular maintenance and replacement of cladding panels. Older buildings were not required to immediately comply with the amendments, and it is therefore unclear if the latest Torch Tower fire was a result of a lack of maintenance.

The recent Dubai fire has been compared to the Greenfell Tower fire in London, which killed at least 80 people on June 14, as both towers shared a similar type of cladding.

On June 15, BBC and Danish newspaper Information revealed that ETI Connect, a Danish-based company owned by British company BAE Systems, has sold a mass surveillance system to several countries in the Middle East, including the UAE. The sales reportedly took place from 2011 to 2016. Other buyers included Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Oman.

According to an anonymous former employee of ETI Connect, the mass surveillance system Evident is able to intercept any internet traffic. It works on a keyword basis, allowing users to immediately find any traffic related to specific people or words. It is also equipped with voice recognition and decryption technology.

In addition to providing countries with the ability to conduct surveillance within their own territories, the system also allows them to conduct surveillance in countries in which they have embassies. This concern was raised in a correspondence between British and Danish authorities, obtained by the BBC. Reportedly, Evident was used by former Tunisian president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, to suppress political opponents.

However, according to a UK Home Office report from 2016, mass surveillance systems play an important role in counter-terrorism investigations elsewhere.