A couple of days ago we broached the topic of big cats in the UAE, and all that it means … most of it bad. In this piece today a writer for The National addresses head-on the concept that it is legal for people here to own big cats of the lion-tiger-cheetah sort, and outlines […]

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No. Not an April Fool’s joke. Every six months or so, we at The National have a story like this: “Big cat found in city streets.” And we’re not talking about an overgrown tabby. These are the real deal. Lions and cheetahs, in particular, often brought into the country illegally, apparently for the amusement of […]

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The two biggest international sports events in the UAE neatly bracket the start and finish of the “winter” sports calendar here: The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in November and the Dubai World Cup in March. The former involves Formula One race cars and the latter horses. In each case, people are trying to get from […]

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When the Al Wasl club of Dubai and the UAE Pro League announced in June that they had hired Diego Maradona to be their coach … I wrote that “this will not be dull.” Got that one right. But that was shooting fish in a barrel. El Diego, FIFA’s co-player of the century (with Pele), […]

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I now have an idea of how ridiculous I must have sounded. A couple of years ago, early in my time in the UAE and at The National, I asked a co-worker of Indian origin whether Major League Baseball ought to make a push to penetrate the India market. India is nuts about cricket, and […]

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The UAE and the Gulf are not always dead-serious places, which seems to be their global reputation. Out and about, you see people smiling and laughing. The idea of a professional comedian is, however, a fairly exotic one in these parts. Which in part explains why we went to see a Canadian-Indian comedian named Russell […]

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We have had a bit of a debate in the pages of The National over the past few days about the future of expatriates in the developing world. Those of us who are, in fact, expats have paid close attention to the discussion, and I will refer to it in today’s post, as well as […]

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As a Baby Boomer whose life was heavily influenced by the Cold War, I wanted to go to Moscow before the Soviets went out of business. But events conspired to keep it from happening. I was to have gone to the 1980 Moscow Olympics, but then came the U.S.-led boycott over Afghanistan (them, again), and […]

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To work in a British-English newsroom, like The National, is to regularly hear expressions unknown in the United States. One of the handier is “minus-one,” used when referring to media activities on the eve of a match. That is, it’s about the match, but “minus-one” day on the calendar. It is when coaches come out […]

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Yes. I am in Tashkent. As in “Uzbekistan, capital of.” The places that the game of soccer can take a person! It may be the greatest gig in sports writing. A “dateline” is what American journalists call the name of a city/town (and sometimes its country) that is placed at the very start of a […]

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