News

MENA’s Biggest Online Piracy Site Shahed4U Shuts Down

The platform had been operating since 2015, and notched up 155 million monthly visits and around 18,700 movie files.

Published

4 years ago

February 28, 2023

Nour Nasir

mena's biggest online piracy site shahed4u shuts down

Getty Images

Egyptian authorities have shut down one of the Middle East and North Africa’s largest online platforms for downloading pirated media, Shahed4U. The site’s servers were located in Alexandria and Cairo and offered access to 68,000 TV titles and 18,700 films.

shahed4u homepage

At its peak, the site’s traffic hit 155 million monthly visits across 118 domains and various copycat sites. Shahed4U had been distributing pirated content since 2015, and the closure follows those of Egybest and MyCima. Egyptian authorities were helped with the shutdown by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the world’s foremost anti-piracy coalition.

Also Read: Best Video Streaming Services In The Middle East

“This spate of unprecedented ACE actions in the MENA region underscores our ever-expanding global reach and our growing relationships with law enforcement and local industry around the world [and is] core to ACE’s global goal of eradicating the illegal distribution of content and protecting the legal marketplace for content creators,” says Charles Rivkin, Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association and Chairman of ACE.

News

Abu Dhabi’s Robot Kitchen Is Serving Up Biryani, Not Burgers

Circus SE wants to put a tiny automated factory inside the buildings where Gulf residents live and work, bypassing part of last-mile delivery.

Published

6 days ago

October 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

abu dhabi's robot kitchen is serving up biryani not burgers

Circus SE

The most telling thing about a new autonomous kitchen now running in Abu Dhabi’s Marina Square is what it won’t cook:

“We don’t do fast food,” says Nikolas Bullwinkel, Founder and CEO of Circus SE. “We’ve actively decided not to build a machine that can only do burgers”.

Instead, the CA-1 system is built around pot-based cooking: curries, pastas, soups and rice dishes. After experimenting with highly personalized recipes, Circus deliberately leaned back toward recognizable food. “We’re going with a chicken biryani because you know it,” Bullwinkel says of the AED 40 dish.

circus se ca-1 robot system

The Germany-based robotics and food technology company operates across eight countries, and Abu Dhabi is its first deployment outside Europe. More locations are expected there and in Dubai.

In Germany, its units can be placed in supermarkets, gas stations, airports and hospitals. In the Gulf, Bullwinkel wants them inside residential and office buildings, replacing some of the complexity of last-mile delivery. “We’re basically bringing a very tiny factory a few square meters into your building,” he says. Catering company Royal Prestige supplies the ingredients and knowledge of local tastes.

The CA-1 manages up to 36 refrigerated ingredient silos alongside automated induction cooking, robotic plating and a self-cleaning dishwasher. Two robotic arms move ingredients through the system with minimal human intervention. It can produce up to 120 hot meals an hour, and a meal such as rice and curry can take around three to four minutes.

Also Read: Ooredoo Qatar’s 5G+ Network Is Built For Machines As Much As People

Five cameras and multiple sensors monitor heat, temperature and consistency, an attempt to approximate what a chef perceives. “You can hear something gets burned, you can smell it, you can see it at some point,” Bullwinkel says. CircusOS, the company’s operating system, adjusts recipes in real time.

You might think of the platform as a threat to kitchen staff, but Bullwinkel frames Circus as a way for chefs to develop recipes and distribute them at scale. With that being said, rising labor costs and shortages are also part of his case for automation.