The Internet is a decentralized global network, designed to be resilient and hard to take down. But it’s still possible to black out a certain area, or even an entire country, disconnecting it from the rest of the world.

That’s what happened in Egypt in 2011 and three times in Syria in just the last year.

Were these waves of blackouts the result of technical failures? Or does Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime have stronghold over the country’s Internet access? Most likely yes, according to experts.

"This is only possible if the government has complete control over the telecommunications infrastructure," said John Shier, of the security firm Sophos.

Even if Syria doesn’t have complete control, it has a stranglehold over the network’s single point of failure: the state-controlled Syrian Telecommunications Establishment (STE), which maintains "the primary flow of Internet traffic in and out of the country," according to David Belson, the editor of network security firm Akamai’s State of the Internet quarterly report.

In Lebanon there is one gunshot a year that isn’t part of a scene of routine violence: The opening sound of the Beirut International Marathon. In a moving talk, marathon founder May El-Khalil explains why she believed a 26.2-mile running event could bring together a country divided for decades by politics and religion, even if […]

The concept of Big Data applies to nearly every business sector, from retail and healthcare to sports and politics The solution use Business analytics! http://cxounplugged.com/2013/07/big-data-analytics-sap-hana/      

Joseph Safra is the richest banker in the world, according to Forbes.

And, incidentally, the name Safra means yellow, or gold, in Arabic.

Convenient. Especially since the illustrious family has had their hand in the gold trade since the Ottoman Empire, facilitating trade throughout the Middle East.

Notorious for their stable yet clandestine banking operations, the mysterious Safra family continues today as a fortress of banking successes.

But the real question on everyone’s mind is this: how has such an illustrious family, at times seeped in scandal, managed to remain so mysterious to the public eye. And what transpired to cause the untimely death of its golden boy, Edmond Safra?

The Safra dynasty started in the Ottoman Empire with Joseph Safra’s great-great grandfather

Wikimedia Commons

The Safra dynasty, as it’s known today, was born with banking mogul Joseph Safra’s (b. 1939) great-great grandfather well over a century ago.

The Lebanese Jewish family became the most trusted bankers of the Ottoman Empire, most notable for facilitating trade between Alexandria, Aleppo and Istanbul. 

Source: The Guardian

When the Empire fell apart, Joseph’s father, Jacob, fled to Beirut to start another bank

Beirut’s Gran Serail Solidere, 1930

Wikimedia Commons

When the Ottoman empire began to unravel at the beginning of the twentieth century, Jacob Safra (father of Joseph and brother Edmond Safra) separated himself from the family business, Safra Freres et Cie. to open the Jacob E. Safra Bank in Beirut.

Jacob’s son Edmond joined the business at the ripe young age of 16 and quickly took over the institution’s precious metals division.  

Source: The Guardian

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