Social media. A mixed blessing, at best. Up-to-the-minute news … up-to-minute bad information. A social-media-driven rumor of a 9.99-magnitude earthquake, hitting the UAE between April 25 to April 30 apparently was taken as truth by some nervous people here. To the point that The National did a story to knock down the rumor.

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It is difficult to convey, via the printed word, the sights and sounds of living in the UAE. Public photography here is actively discouraged and sometimes illegal. And conveying a sound … that is difficult in print. Thus, a video of Emiratis interacting would be a handy thing, for those of you who wonder what […]

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The UAE is made up of seven Emirates, and you are forgiven if you do not know more than two — Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The three northernmost emirates have little or no oil, a fair number of Emiratis who are anything but wealthy, and a predilection for conservatism, both in matters of religion and […]

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A fairly amazing statistic reported in the lead story in Sunday’s editions of The National: The second-leading cause of death in the UAE in 2010 was “road injury”. Which trailed only heart disease for deaths — 2,326 to 1,838. Let’s see if we can figure out why that might be. Two distinct concepts are at […]

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This brings a whole new meaning to the expression “police pursuit”. Dubai’s police have purchased a Lamborghini Aventador — cost, Dh1.5 million, or about $410,000 — to add to their fleet of patrol cars. No. Really. The UAE is a country that is in love with fast and exotic vehicles, but how did a workaday […]

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The calls and emails began coming into the newsroom a bit before 4 p.m. “Did something just happen? Was that … an earthquake?” One person’s email read: “What should I do?” This is a country with a large number of people who know earthquakes only as events that happen elsewhere. Particularly Emiratis and Britons, whose […]

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This is a sad story. But it also has elements of fairy tales. As well as lies. Some of them sad, pathetic lies … some more along the lines of a lack of “truth in advertising”. The National has done a story about the phenomenon of migrant workers here paying for fake/doctored photos — which […]

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Dubai International Airport has moved up to No. 2 in the world for international departures. Thus, if you travel enough, even from the United States, the likelihood is increasing that you will land in Dubai. This is not hard to figure out. Asia’s east and its subcontinent have been the sites of much of the […]

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Searching my memory, but I am not sure I had really grasped, pre-UAE, that the main event of the Dubai World Cup offered the biggest cash prize of any horse race/meet. The race is worth $10 million, with $6 million going to the winner. That’s a lot of oats and alfalfa. The Dubai World Cup […]

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Rene Douglas wasn’t the best jockey around. He was not Eddie Arcaro, or Bill Shoemaker or Chris McCarron or Gary Stevens. But he was good. Quite good. Good enough to have won more than 3,500 races, including the 1998 Belmont Stakes and the Juvenile Fillies race at the 2006 Breeders’ Cup. Then came a horrific […]

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