LONDON: A community center in southwest England has found an unlikely source of funds after reaching out to the ruler of Dubai.
The Godolphin Cross Community Association announced recently that a donation from Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum was enough to secure the purchase of a former Methodist chapel for the town’s new community center building.
Villagers contacted the sheikh in September, because his famous Godolphin race-horse stables in Newmarket, England, shares the town’s name. His wife’s office responded via email within a few weeks. They spent the following months negotiating the donation.
The amount of the donation was not disclosed. The association had previously said it was about £65,000 ($85,000) short of its goal of £90,000.
“We showed him our vision for a community center in the village and he was so impressed he decided he would like to help,” said association secretary Paul Gray.
“I don’t know if he’ll visit but he is always welcome,” Gray said. “We’re proof you should never say never.”
Many public spaces in the village have closed, making the donation vital, particularly to youth groups that need a place to meet.
“All of these groups had nowhere to meet,” Gray said. The chapel was the only available space, and without its purchase the “community would cease to function, with nowhere to operate.”
The community association did not immediately release the news because the sheikh, who is also the vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, is a “private man.”
The government of Dubai did not respond to a request for comment.
Godolphin Cross’s long-term plan is to raise additional money for renovating costs using more traditional funding sources such as grants.
The community center will host the town’s youth group, coffee mornings and general gatherings.
Dubai ruler comes to the help of English village in need of funds
Dubai ruler comes to the help of English village in need of funds
Oracle says data center outage causing issues faced by US TikTok users
WASHINGTON: Oracle on Tuesday said issues faced by US users of social media app TikTok are the result of a temporary weather-related power outage at an Oracle data center, after California Governor Gavin Newsom linked the issues to what he called the suppression of content critical of President Donald Trump.
“Over the weekend, an Oracle data center experienced a temporary weather-related power outage which impacted TikTok,” Oracle spokesperson Michael Egbert said in an email.
A powerful winter storm struck much of the US over the weekend.
“The challenges US TikTok users may be experiencing are the result of technical issues that followed the power outage, which Oracle and TikTok are working to quickly resolve,” Egbert said.
On Monday, Newsom said his office was launching a review to determine if TikTok’s content moderation practices violated state law.
“Following TikTok’s sale to a Trump-aligned business group, our office has received reports — and independently confirmed instances — of suppressed content critical of President Trump,” Newsom’s office had said.
TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, last week finalized a deal to set up a majority US-owned joint venture known as TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC that will secure US data, to avert a ban on the short video app used by more than 200 million Americans. The deal was praised by Trump.
The joint venture has denied censorship, saying “it would be inaccurate to report that this is anything but the technical issues we’ve transparently confirmed.”
Each of the joint venture’s three managing investors — cloud computing giant Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX — will hold a stake of 15 percent. The deal provides for American and global investors to hold 80.1 percent of the venture while ByteDance will own 19.9 percent.
The joint venture said on Tuesday it “made significant progress in recovering our US infrastructure with our US data center partner” but noted that US users may still face some technical issues, including when posting new content.
With more than 16 million followers on his personal TikTok account, Trump credited the app with helping him win the 2024 election.
Last week’s deal was a milestone for TikTok after years of battles with the US government over Washington’s concerns about risks to national security and privacy under Trump and former President Joe Biden.
