Twice in a year the UAE has hosted a world Under 17 sports event. Last fall it was the Fifa U17 World Cup. This month it is the Fiba Under 17 World Championship. Fiba is the international sanctioning body for basketball. And this basketball tournament has been more interesting than was the soccer tournament. Even […]

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We have reached a point in sports history … and perhaps it is a compliment, although of a back-handed sort … that any time an aging or semi-flaky player is thought to be on the move … he invariably is linked to a club in the UAE. Earlier, it was Jorge Valdivia, Chilean midfielder. Now, […]

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In journalism, stories that seem to come up regularly … stories endemic to your coverage area … sometimes are lumped under the topic of “standing heads”. Coming from the time when newspaper pages were put together using hot metal letters, via linotype machines, and linotype operators kept already prepared certain common topics. Thus, they were […]

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Americans travel around Europe or Asia, and they soon discover that U.S. history — and California history, in particular — is nothing, compared to most of Eurasia. Egypt has recorded history going back more than 5,000 years. China can account for 4,000 years. Nearly any country in Europe, even in the north, has history going […]

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This occurred to me while reading a long story in The National’s business section about Taco Bell and its apparently new “crispy waffle taco” breakfast item. (The assumption being, on the part of our business staff, that nearly everyone in the UAE knows what Taco Bell is.) So, how is the UAE doing, when it […]

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Abu Dhabi, both the city and the greater emirate, is not new to hosting movie makers. But it seems fair to say that never before have two movies as prominent as these in production around Abu Dhabi at the same time. And those would be the seventh episode of the Star Wars franchise, due for […]

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Beno Saradzic is at it again. Three years ago, the Slovenian photographer, who lives in the UAE, gave us a spectacular time-lapse photo/video of Abu Dhabi. It seems much more recent, in my memory, but here is the blog post from 2011. The new photo project is named: Beyond: Memoirs in a Time Lapse. You […]

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I’m trying to figure out how this happened. How Al Ahli of Dubai went from being one of the better teams in the UAE soccer league to being the unrivaled best team in the country. And, like many takeovers, it was incremental. I saw Ahli play last night, against Al Jazira, just down the street […]

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In the offices of The National today, a press release landed in company email under a Moet & Chandon logo. The message included the following: –That a new variety of the company’s famous champagne, “Moet Platinum” was being launched. –To mark the occasion, on May 25 the company would fill the Dubai Fountain, just outside […]

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I’m a bit slow on the uptake. Or maybe I haven’t been down to the water enough. After 4.5 years, I have decided what Abu Dhabi … well, actually, the whole of the UAE … should focus on as its business model, After The Oil. The beach. It won’t bring in megabucks, like oil has […]

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