Latest news with #TomPhillips
Khaleej Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Khaleej Times
DP World Tour sets the gold standard, wins big at Middle East Sport Industry Awards
It was a night to remember at the Middle East Sport Industry Awards. But for the DP World Tour, it was more than just a celebration — it was confirmation of a bold vision taking flight. Held under the patronage of the Abu Dhabi Sports Council, the ceremony is the region's premier platform for recognizing trailblazers in sports. Among the glittering list of honourees, the DP World Tour stood tall — collecting two Gold Awards for Major Sport Event of the Year and Excellence in Sustainability. The DP World Tour Championship, held annually at Dubai's Jumeirah Golf Estates, is already a fixture in the international golf calendar. But in 2024, it became something more: a global spectacle that fused elite sport, cultural diversity, and sustainable innovation. Drawing the highest-ever spectator turnout for a golf event in the UAE, the championship's success was no accident. A fan-first strategy, combined with a dynamic marketing campaign, brought in a record 29% female audience — and international visitors accounted for over 30% of ticket sales. Dubai, long celebrated for its iconic skylines and hospitality, has now added world-class sporting appeal to its global identity. Speaking about the award wins Tom Phillips, Director of Middle East at the DP World Tour, said: 'These two Awards make it 12 prestigious sports industry awards won by the DP World Tour globally in the past 18 months, showing that our commitment to innovation is being acknowledged by our peers. " The Green Drive: Leading with Purpose In a world increasingly alert to climate realities, sport is no longer a bystander — and neither is the DP World Tour. Their Green Drive initiative — which secured top honours for Excellence in Sustainability — is perhaps the most ambitious environmental strategy in professional golf today. With a pledge to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2040, the Tour is setting a benchmark for the global sporting industry. From piloting energy-efficient technologies at Rolex Series events to launching an innovative travel emissions offset platform for fans — a world-first — the Tour is reimagining what responsibility looks like in sports. The Tour has gone a step further by introducing a Sustainability Awards programme for its suppliers in the Middle East, amplifying best practices across the industry and fostering a culture of shared accountability. A Partnership with Purpose The transformation of the DP World Tour would not be possible without its namesake partner. Based in Dubai, DP World has redefined the global logistics landscape — and now, it's bringing the same drive for innovation to sport. As the Tour's title partner since 2022, DP World's involvement goes beyond branding. It reflects a long-term commitment to elevating Dubai's status as a global sports hub — and to positioning the city at the intersection of elite performance, global connectivity, and sustainable growth. 'We would like to thank our Title Partner DP World and all our partners and suppliers for helping us to deliver a memorable experience for fans and leave a positive legacy within local communities,' added Phillips. A Regional Beacon for Global Sport With 12 international awards collected in just 18 months, the DP World Tour isn't just succeeding — it's leading. As the 2025 season unfolds across 26 countries and 42 tournaments, all roads will once again lead to Dubai for the Tour's grand finale. What began as a tournament is now a symbol — of what can be achieved when sport, sustainability, and strategic vision meet on the world stage.
The Guardian
12-03-2025
- The Guardian
Police launch new search for fugitive father and children missing in New Zealand wilderness for three years
New Zealand police are launching a fresh operation in the rugged North Island wilderness to track down a fugitive father and his three children who have been missing for more than three years. Just before Christmas 2021, Tom Phillips fled into a remote area of Waikato with his children Ember, thought to be now aged 9, Maverick, 10, and Jayda, 11, following a dispute with their mother. Phillips does not have legal custody for his children. Phillips comes from a farming family in Marokopa – a tiny coastal settlement of fewer than 100 people, part of the vast Waikato region where he and his children are presumed to be hiding. 'Police will be present in the wider Marokopa area over the next few days as we continue making inquiries into the whereabouts of Tom Phillips and his three children,' detective senior sergeant Andy Saunders said in a statement. Officers will be conducting inquiries north of Marokopa, in and around the remote settlements of Te Waitere and Te Maika. 'This has not been prompted by any specific sighting – it is simply a continuation of the ongoing investigation,' Saunders said. The Guardian has contacted the police for further comment. The Waikato area is made up of long sweeping coastline to the west, forested terrain and farmland in the centre, limestone cave networks to the north and a smattering of small rural towns and settlements throughout. Marokopa is a quiet, isolated settlement in the Waikato, two hours from the nearest city, Hamilton, with one long winding road in and out of the densely forested and hilly landscape. The remoteness of the landscape has so far frustrated police attempts to locate Phillips. The case has fascinated New Zealanders, who have struggled to understand how, in a country of close-knit communities, Phillips has evaded detection. While there is no suggestion his family has helped him, the question of how Phillips has managed to conceal himself and his three children – and survive – in the harsh terrain has puzzled the nation, leading to speculation others in the community may be aiding him. Phillips' lengthy disappearance was preempted by an earlier – albeit shorter – stint where he went bush with his children. In September 2021, the four were reported missing and his ute was found abandoned along the Marokopa shoreline, resulting in a major search operation across land and sea. Nineteen days later, Phillips and the children walked into his parents' farmhouse just outside Marokopa. Phillips claimed he had taken his children on an extended camping trip in dense bush in an effort to clear his head. He was charged with wasting police time and resources. But fewer than three months later, the four were reported missing again and when Phillips failed to show for a January court appearance, a warrant was issued for his arrest. Sightings of Phillips and his children over the last three years have been rare and fleeting. In November, Phillips allegedly stole a quad bike from a rural property and broke into a shop in Piopio, with CCTV footage showing two figures on a street, believed to be Phillips and one of his children. While there were reportedly several other sightings in mid-2023 and an $80,000 reward put up for information in June, the trail later went cold.' Police describe Phillips as someone who 'doesn't live a mainstream lifestyle', eschewing social media and limiting his use of mainstream banks. Meanwhile, his purchases of camping items and seedlings suggest he may be living off the land. In October 2024, footage emerged of an adult and three children walking through Marokopa farmland, after a chance encounter with teenage pig hunters who pulled out their phones and began filming. Police believed it to be Phillips and his three children. A police search of the area the following day failed to find them. The children's mother, Cat, has spoken of her grief being separated from her children and has regularly appealed to Phillips to come forward.
Telegraph
16-02-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Is this the end of the world? Not really
'Fake! Bum Show! World Is Intact!' crowed the San Francisco Chronicle on December 18 1919. A Jesuit professor had predicted that a planetary alignment would ravage the earth on the 17th – but the day had passed without incident. As Tom Phillips writes in his entertaining new book, A Brief History of the End of the F*cking World, people have been confidently predicting the End at least since the dawn of Christianity with 'an absolutely 100 per cent failure rate'. But such predictions make for reliably good copy. And they continue to do so. During a single month in 2019, the Daily Express carried no fewer than 87 stories about world-destroying asteroids. The thought of annihilation inspires fear, desire and ridicule in equal measure: as Phillips observes, 'we take our own apocalyptic speculations very seriously… at the same time, we also love stories about how everyone else's apocalyptic beliefs are batshit crazy.' As far as we know, the Persian prophet Zoroaster was the first to suggest that the world could end. He proposed that history was an arrow rather than a wheel, and therefore that it had a final destination. Just as influentially, he dramatised this conclusion as the ultimate battle between the forces of good and evil – ideas which made their way into Judaism, and more starkly into the Western Christian imagination, via the lurid drama of the Book of Revelation. Even ostensibly secular uses of apocalyptic storytelling, from political projects to disaster movies, tend to cleave to this narrative of destruction and renewal; of a world divided between the righteous and the damned. 'As long as there are people… who can't conceive of how [the world] could improve without everything burning down, then there will be people ready to tell a story that satisfies that impulse.' Needless to say, this is a dangerous idea. Cannily neutered for centuries by St Augustine, who insisted that Revelation was a metaphor rather than a prophecy, it came roaring back in the Middle Ages thanks to the Italian monk Joachim of Fiore, and has fuelled countless extremists, prophets and cults ever since. The arc of apocalyptic thought tends to be inherited, and to bend towards bloodshed: the same impatient zeal that led Anabaptists to turn Münster into a proto-totalitarian slaughterhouse in the 1530s later animated the Islamic State. In 19th-century China, Hong Xiuquan's messianic Taiping Rebellion led to the deaths of up to 30 million people. The idea endures partly because it's politically useful. As Phillips points out, apocalyptic narratives 'have been used to demonise or deify pretenders to the throne, to rationalise crusades and colonialism. They have stoked repression, reform and revolt in equal measure.' James I – who called the Pope the Antichrist so often that the pontiff snapped during one meeting and told him to stop – was more motivated by the necessity to appease Protestants than sincere millenarian conviction. Hitler warned in Mein Kampf that if his anti-Semitic crusade failed, then the planet would 'move through the ether devoid of men'. Today, there's a clear connection between Elon Musk's long-standing obsession with turning Mars into a cosmic Noah's Ark and his new-found conviction that his critics are active threats to human civilisation. But this is not just a story about extremists and cranks. Figures as momentous as Christopher Columbus, Isaac Newton, the mathematician John Napier, the Suffragette Christabel Pankhurst and the slave revolutionary Nat Turner were all firm believers in the apocalypse, drawing up timetables and cataloguing the omens. Phillips traverses this sprawling terrain with energy and charm, though his compulsive quips and blokey title sell short the breadth of his research. His lucid explanation of potential asteroid impacts, for example, is not improved by calling the lethal object 'Smashy McDeathrock'. In its last third, Phillips moves from religion to the history and science of existential risk, and to surprisingly reassuring effect: 'Humans are a survival machine.' Consider that only once in recorded history, after the Black Death, has the global population definitively declined. The latest scholarship suggests that the scale of the Bronze Age collapse and the climatic impact of the Toba supervolcano 74,000 years ago have both been exaggerated. As for the killer asteroids that haunt the Daily Express, the chance of one destroying city, let alone a planet, are vanishingly small. Phillips advises worrying more about the genuine 'local apocalypses' produced by war and climate change rather than the hypothetical Big One. Unfortunately, a sense of crisis can make one more, rather than less, likely. During the Cold War, we almost stumbled into global devastation at least twice: from human misunderstandings during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and from a computer error in 1983. On each occasion, a Soviet officer blocked the release of weapons because he kept his head. Had these two men panicked – well, use your imagination. Among the many existential threats we fear, with varying degrees of justification, is fear itself.
