Month: August 2016

Monaco families will very soon have the opportunity to help disadvantaged children prepare for the school year thanks to an innovative initiative created by Click Monaco, in partnership with the Association Les Enfants de Frankie and Stars’n’Bars.

It’s “that” time of the year when children are putting forward their best arguments as to why and how last year’s back pack is no longer suitable for them and a new one is in order. This is why Click Monaco has initiated this unprecedented campaign: #DonneTonAncienCartable (Give me your old backpack), which of course won’t help you avoid rentrée shopping all together but will allow you to do so with some peace of mind.

Kate Powers, co-owner of Stars’n’Bars, says, “We are really delighted with Click’s very original idea of ‘recycling’ to benefit less fortunate children … and also help the planet by reducing waste.”

Based in Monaco, Click Monaco is a unique platform for classified ads regrouping all types of goods and services for sale, but also more importantly in this case: donations. This campaign launches Sunday September 4, from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm, at Stars’n’Bars, in order for everyone to deposit last year’s backpack, while enjoying a sunny afternoon on the Port Hercule. All bags collected that day will be distributed on September 7 in Nice by Les Enfants de Frankie.

BillRun Technologies Ltd., a billing company based in Tel Aviv, specialising in open source and cloud solutions, has set up an advanced billing system for Monaco Telecom (MT). The financial scope of the project is in the order of several hundred thousand dollars.

The Principality welcomes more than 300,000 tourists per year, one-third of which are business tourists, i.e. those attending conferences and meetings. This demographic constraint is a challenge for MT, which chose BillRun to implement its new complete solution for billing and customer service, following the success of BillRun as part of the implementation of its billing system in Golan Telecom Tel Aviv.

Martin Péronnet, General Director of Monaco Telecom, says, “We are driving a profound transformation of our IT tools, moving from an inherited and complex system that was multi-operator and very expensive in CAPEX/OPEX with a simple, fully open-source system.”

Mr Pérronet, who was Marketing Director at ‪Bouygues Telecom before joining MT in 2009, adds, “This is probably one of the very first times in the world an incumbent operator offering a complete solution for B2B and B2C telecommunication services for mobile, fixed, TV, voice, data and hosting has accomplished such a transformation. Our goal over time is to control all the developments internally to reduce our IT costs by 75 percent, and provide an effective, simple and flexible system to our customers.”

BillRun was chosen as a Monaco Telecom partner because “BillRun represents one of the best open-source billing systems, and we have achieved all B2C in a year and a half”.

Ofer Cohen, CEO of BillRun, says, “This is the first project carried out by Israel and this has involved a reassessment and full integration of the central system and ancillary systems MT BillRun.”

The first phase involved implementing the BillRun billing systems and CRM at MT for VoIP (Internet telephony) and broadband while the second phase implemented these applications in the mobile environment and VoD (Video on Demand), Mr Cohen goes on to explain: “The development was conducted in collaboration with IT and development teams at MT. BillRun team managed the migration of the obsolete proprietary system of the company to an open-source architecture, including training and knowledge transfer. This highly complex project of involved close collaboration between several teams of both companies, and the system has been fully operational since May 2015, to great customer satisfaction.”

“By using an open-source system,” explains Cohen, “it means that MT is no longer tied to a particular supplier. Further to our success with MT, we intend to develop BillRun’s international activities.”

Unconfirmed sources have indicated that Matchroom’s Eddie Hearn is expanding his boxing operation to Monaco with a show lined up in the Principality in either October or November, according to the UK boxing press.

Liverpool’s Callum Smith has been mentioned as a possible name for the inaugural show, which is rumoured to be November 12. However, he has a mandatory British Super Middleweight title defence against Luke Blackledge on his plate as well as a date on Hearn’s October 15 bill in Liverpool, which is headlined by Tony Bellew’s maiden defence of his WBC cruiserweight title against America’s BJ Flores.

Hearn won the purse bid for Smith-Blackledge. The British Boxing Board of Control (BBBoC) states that it “will take place on a date and at a venue as yet to be advised” when confirming the successful bid.

Monaco is no stranger to big time boxing, as Rodney Berman put shows together on a regular basis and the Salle des Étoiles hosted boxing shows.

Ruslan Provodnikov was the last fighter to headline at the venue; he beat Jesus Alvarez Rodriguez in four rounds last November. Gennady Golovkin has also fought in Monaco, beating Nobuhiro Ishida, Osumanu Adama and Martin Murray (KO 3, KO 7 and TKO 11 respectively) in Middleweight title defences.

Sheffield-based promoter Dennis Hobson teamed up with Philippe Fondu for a show in 2006. Matthew Hatton (W RTD 6 over Aliaksandr Abramenka) and Femi Fehintola (W TKO 2 over Ivo Golakov) appeared on that one and both spoke glowingly about the experience of boxing in Monaco. If Hearn does make the move a slew of British fighters may benefit from the trip in coming years.

Just after 5 pm on Saturday, many Nice residents were seeking shelter from a sweltering afternoon sun. Suddenly, there was a startling sound of an airplane followed by a nearby vibration coming from the sky.

A Turkish Airline flight was flying over the city of Nice at an altitude so low it caused immediate panic amongst the population.

“I thought at first it was part of a military flyby for the Liberation ceremonies on Sunday,” one Magnan resident told Monaco Life. “But my apartment started to shake and I was horrified to look out my window and see the belly of an airplane fly over our building. I ran to the balcony with my heart pumping expecting that it would intentionally crash into the Lenval children’s hospital.”

If panic was felt on the ground, onboard the Turkish Airline flight from Istanbul it was chaos. Shirel, a 21-year-old student at a Nice business school told Nice-Matin, “I fly a lot and have never been afraid. This was a flight like any other, until the approach into in Nice. I was in the window seat and everything seemed as usual. But on arrival, the plane took a very different route. Usually we fly over the sea before landing. But I had the impression we were flying over the city centre. At first, I didn’t panic but there were impressive bump and a thud.”

Shirel described looking out to see they were flying just above buildings. “We were really close,” she said. “Nobody understood what was happening and passengers got really scared. With everything that is happening nowadays, you think the worst. I thought our plane had been hijacked.”

The pilot did deliver a message to passengers but it was in Turkish and many people didn’t understand what he was saying. “Once on the runway, I was very relieved like everyone else,” Shirel explained. “I had only one thought: to get off the plane.”

On Sunday evening, the Alpes-Maritimes prefecture confirmed that it is opening an investigation into a Turkish Airlines Boeing 737, reported Nice-Matin.

“The Safety of Civil Aviation Directorate received a report Saturday from the control tower for an abnormal route on this Turkish Airlines flight,” Philippe Castanet told the local daily. “An investigation has therefore been opened to understand the reasons for this flight path.” The prefecture also indicated an internal investigation at Turkish Airlines may be opened against the pilots.

The approach to Nice airport is often voted the one of the most beautiful in the world yet it’s also considered one of the most dangerous in Europe.

Annette Anderson of Stars’n’Bars with a photo of an American GI standing outside the iconic Van Cleef & Arpels taken during the liberation of Monaco from the German army in 1944. The Liberation followed the Allied landing near Nice on August 15, as well as the allied aerial bombardments, which badly damaged the port area of Monaco. On September 3, the American 517th Parachute Combat Team arrived in Monaco.

According to popular legend, a jeep with two American GI’s drove into Monte Carlo and pulled up to the Tip Top Bar, where one of the GIs, the future-author Irwin Shaw, jumped out, ordered some drinks and announced that Monaco had been liberated. In no time at all, crowds of Monegasques were crowding around the Americans to express their thanks.

On Saturday, September 3, the MonacoUSA Association will celebrate the 72st anniversary of the Liberation of Monaco during WWII with a special dinner show with music of the 1940s. Local artists performing include the Lib Day Darlings (Alicia Sedgwick, Colette Marx-Nielsen and Louise Harrison), London West End performers Paul Spicer and Matt Firth and local crooners Carl Henry and Mike Lorimer, who will recreate the atmosphere of the 1940s with wartime jazz hits by the Andrews Sisters, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday.

The event will start at 6 pm in the StarDeck at Stars’n’Bars and will include a variety of animations, including a free tombola, swing dance contest and prizes for the “best 1940s look”.

An entrance fee of €15 will include the two-hour show as well as a glass of wine, beer or soft. Tickets on sale here. There is a limited number of seats available and guests can reserve tables for dinner by contacting monacousa.mc@gmail.com

MonacoUSA will be present at the memorial ceremony at the cemetery in the late afternoon and lay a wreath to pay its homage to French Resistance fighters executed by the Gestapo in 1944 prior to the Liberation of the Principality by the American Army.