Idris Elba Presents Mi Mandela CD cover. AP Photo / Warner Bros Records
Idris Elba Presents Mi Mandela CD cover. AP Photo / Warner Bros Records

Album review - Idris Elba presents mi Mandela - Idris Elba



Idris Elba Presents mi Mandela

Idris Elba

(Parlophone)

Three stars

Playing Nelson Mandela in 2013's theatrical release, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, clearly struck a chord with the British actor Idris Elba – a musical one. On Idris Elba Presents mi Mandela, a 14-track project on Elba's own 7wallace imprint, the actor offers an uplifting journey, inspired by Mandela and his own late father. The music incorporates a variety of South African rhythms and styles, including marabi, kwela, mbaqanga and mbube, mixed in with western sounds. Elba largely wrote the album on a keyboard and laptop during the filming of Long Walk to Freedom, but it's far from a solo venture. The opening track, the lilting Aero Mathata, blends vocals from the famed mbaqanga group Mahotella Queens with the producer Aero Manyelo's Afro-tech beats. So Many People, featuring the British actor-singer Shaun Escoffery, melds light African rhythms with 1970s-style Isaac Hayes soul.

There's a warmth and joy that flows through these tracks, even when Elba is addressing death. The lovely Tree, featuring singer-songwriter Audra Mae and neo-soul singer Cody ChesnuTT, stresses the continuity of family even after the patriarch is gone. "Although his chair is empty, his love will always be at home," Mae sings against a lilting African melody. Similarly, on the lullaby-ish Hold On, featuring Thabo and George the Poet, death brings only a temporary separation between loved ones.

Elba steps behind the mic throughout, especially on mi Mandela, a largely spoken piece that amusingly recounts his adventures playing Mandela.

It's always tempting – and somewhat cynical – to dismiss efforts by actors such as this as vanity projects, but mi Mandela feels more like a labour of love that Elba approached with an appropriate degree of humility. He smartly surrounds himself with a stellar cast of artists here, even including a cover of Mumford & Sons' Home to round out this enjoyable and compelling album.

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Name: HyperSpace
 
Started: 2020
 
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
 
Based: Dubai, UAE
 
Sector: Entertainment 
 
Number of staff: 210 
 
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
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UAE squad

Rahul Chopra (captain), Aayan Afzal Khan, Ali Naseer, Aryansh Sharma, Basil Hameed, Dhruv Parashar, Junaid Siddique, Muhammad Farooq, Muhammad Jawadullah, Muhammad Waseem, Omid Rahman, Rahul Bhatia, Tanish Suri, Vishnu Sukumaran, Vriitya Aravind

Fixtures

Friday, November 1 – Oman v UAE
Sunday, November 3 – UAE v Netherlands
Thursday, November 7 – UAE v Oman
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Director: Chris Winterbauer

Stars: Lana Condor and Cole Sprouse 

Rating: 3/5

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Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais

Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.

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Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are tokens that represent ownership of unique items. They allow the tokenisation of things such as art, collectibles and even real estate.

 

An NFT can have only one official owner at one time. And since they're minted and secured on the Ethereum blockchain, no one can modify the record of ownership, not even copy-paste it into a new one.

 

This means NFTs are not interchangeable and cannot be exchanged with other items. In contrast, fungible items, such as fiat currencies, can be exchanged because their value defines them rather than their unique properties.

 
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CSIL 2-star 145cm One Round with Jump-Off

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3.           Georgia Tame (GBR) Cash Up 39.42

4.           Nadia Taryam (UAE) Askaria 3 39.63

5.           Miriam Schneider (GER) Fidelius G 47.74

The National Archives, Abu Dhabi

Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.

Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en

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Starring: Yasmine Al Massri, Clara Khoury, Kamel El Basha, Ashraf Barhoum

Rating: 4/5

Key changes

Commission caps

For life insurance products with a savings component, Peter Hodgins of Clyde & Co said different caps apply to the saving and protection elements:

• For the saving component, a cap of 4.5 per cent of the annualised premium per year (which may not exceed 90 per cent of the annualised premium over the policy term). 

• On the protection component, there is a cap  of 10 per cent of the annualised premium per year (which may not exceed 160 per cent of the annualised premium over the policy term).

• Indemnity commission, the amount of commission that can be advanced to a product salesperson, can be 50 per cent of the annualised premium for the first year or 50 per cent of the total commissions on the policy calculated. 

• The remaining commission after deduction of the indemnity commission is paid equally over the premium payment term.

• For pure protection products, which only offer a life insurance component, the maximum commission will be 10 per cent of the annualised premium multiplied by the length of the policy in years.

Disclosure

Customers must now be provided with a full illustration of the product they are buying to ensure they understand the potential returns on savings products as well as the effects of any charges. There is also a “free-look” period of 30 days, where insurers must provide a full refund if the buyer wishes to cancel the policy.

“The illustration should provide for at least two scenarios to illustrate the performance of the product,” said Mr Hodgins. “All illustrations are required to be signed by the customer.”

Another illustration must outline surrender charges to ensure they understand the costs of exiting a fixed-term product early.

Illustrations must also be kept updatedand insurers must provide information on the top five investment funds available annually, including at least five years' performance data.

“This may be segregated based on the risk appetite of the customer (in which case, the top five funds for each segment must be provided),” said Mr Hodgins.

Product providers must also disclose the ratio of protection benefit to savings benefits. If a protection benefit ratio is less than 10 per cent "the product must carry a warning stating that it has limited or no protection benefit" Mr Hodgins added.

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