The Royal Cavalry Club has recently held the 6th horse race of the season on Thursday, the 28th of January 2010 in Al Fulaij track in Wilayat Barka under the auspices of His Excellency Nasr bin Humood Al Kindi, Head of Finance and Supply of Royal Court Affairs.

The race saw eight games, six of which were for purebred Arabian horses and two for thoroughbred horses. The international racing expert Jean Pierre was among the many attendees.

More pictures after the break.

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Oman Air has just announced that they will be flying new destinations directly from Muscat to Malaysia, Pakistan & Tanzania. The new routes, according to thier wikipedia page, and further by this page will roll out as follows

4 Weekly return flights from Muscat International to Julius Nyerere International (Dar es Salam, Tanzania) starting June, 1st.

3 Weekly return flights from Muscat International to Islamabad International (Islamabad, Pakistan) starting May, 10th.

4 Weekly return flights from Muscat International to Lahore International (Lahore, Pakistan) starting May, 10th.

4 Weekly return flights from Muscat International to Kuala Lumpur International (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) starting May, 1st.

It is clear as of yet whether Oman Air expects delievery of more new Airbus A330 ordered in 2008, or whether older aircrafts from the fleet will be comissioned to serve these lines. More details when available.

Fatburger has announced it’s intention of opening up a branch of the popular American burger-hut chain somewhere in Musacat, by the end of this year, or in early 2011.

The announcement comes to succeed of the chain’s intention to expand it’s world wide network by 30 branches. Regionally, currently the chain has one branch in Dubai (Dubai Mall), where the companies plans to expand its presence there, as well as launch as much as 17 in branches in Qatar & KSA.

More on this when available.

KFC now offers 24 hours home delivery services. Simply call their call-centre, 24477777, and place your order. Al-Qurum and Ruwi branches offer the 24-hour home delivery service, but they do deliver to other nearby areas.

A concert held last night in the Royal Oman Police Stadium has been declared both the highest grossing and a largest attended concert in Muscat history. A. R. Rahman, the award winning Indian musician who has recieved much reverence for writing the musical score for Slumdog Millionaire last year, and landing a number of awards for it. Along with his hit song (also from the movie) ‘Jai Ho‘, a number of other songs were also preferomed. The 18,000 attendance, mostly from the Indian community, is now considered the highest attended musical event in Muscat, and as a result of which, also the highest grossing.

In contrast, little or no artist has managed to compare to the 18,000 number in the last few years, except for live open air concerts, mostly free, by regional and arab artists usually held in public beaches in coincidence with the Muscat Festivals over the years. This could be due to the lack of a dedicated venue able to accomodoate attendees, poor strategy towards attracting international headliner acts by government and the lack of enthusiasm from the private entertainment sector to mediate events of such scale. The first point could soon be addressed after the launch of the Royal Opera House in Al-Qurum, however.

The Rahman concert, if anything, proves that events which require scale can in fact be attempted, and people working close with the 2nd Asian Beach Games organizing committee have been discussing the possiblity of doing just that for the event held later this year.

We will keep you tuend. Videos embeds from YouTube from the concert after the break.

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The Heritage Foundation, a subsidiary of the Wall Street Journal, has ranked Oman as the 43rd country in the Index of Economic Freedoms. The index which bases its ranks on criteria such business, trade and financial freedoms, government size, and freedom from corruption has awarded Oman a score of 67.7. The number, also a favourable climb of 0.7% from last year’s score.

In contrast with other countries from the region, Oman ranked a tie-third with Kuwait, only preceded by Qatar and Bahrain. Interestingly, however, preceding the United Arab Emirates.

The report detailed areas which may demonstrate the best of our economic qualities. A whopping 98.5 in fiscal freedom for example, and respectable scores in trade freedoms and labour freedom (83.4 & 86.4 respectively). On the other hand,the lowest scores came in the freedom from corruption and property rights categories where both scored less than 60.

A very interesting analysis of how the data plots is presented on the index’s website on this page, and other interesting publications on the basis of the collected data is found here.