The sixth Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will be held two Sundays hence. It will be the second time the Formula One drivers’ champion will be decided in the UAE capital. Which is the aim of any track that winds up with the final date on the F1 calendar. “All we want is the championship up […]

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This game snuck up on us, a little. In that this could have been the final game of Landon Donovan‘s soccer career, and I’m not sure many of us really had recognized that, aside from the Los Angeles Times. It was not his last match, thanks in large part to the three goals and an […]

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Beach soccer is a fairly big thing in the UAE. Makes sense. Lots of beaches here. All the major cities, save Al Ain, are on the water. So, a couple of times a year some major tournaments are held here, generally in Dubai. The beach soccer heavyweights are invited. Brazil, Russia, Portugal, Iran … but […]

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Amateur photography and the UAE can be a volatile mix. A 70-year-old American named Robert Black could tell you about it, once he gets out of prison. Black appeared at a Creative Thinkers conference in Abu Dhabi last month, and before leaving the country apparently decided to take some photos in the city. The problem […]

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Have I mentioned I love the Volvo Ocean Race? Oh, yes. I have. The first leg, from Alicante, Spain, to Cape Town, South Africa, ended yesterday, with the Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing boat, Azzam, the first across the finish line. Azzam needed 25 days to cover the 6,500 nautical miles from the Mediterranean to the […]

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I was born in Long Beach. Lived on the east side of it for most of 25 years. Yet even I have a sort of default setting inside my head that says “dangerous, rundown” when thinking about the city. I like Long Beach, but it would be Compton (as in, “straight out of”) if it […]

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That was perhaps the inevitable headline to a story that ran in The National over the weekend concerning a group of people dedicated to researching paranormal activity in the UAE. This was known as the Ghostbusters story, in the newsroom, harking back to the wonderful 1984 movie with Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd. The theme […]

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Like most of you, I have a mental filter than enables me to ignore most advertising pitches. TV, radio, online. Whatever. I don’t notice them. To penetrate the filter the commercial spot needs to be funny or loud or clever … or, in this case, beautiful.

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We know this for a fact: The island of  Tristan da Cunha is the most remote inhabited location on Earth. The Hawaiian Islands are more remote, collectively, but seven of them are inhabited. If you tire of one, you can hop over to the next. Can’t do that at Tristan da Cunha. The nearest humans […]

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Probably just about anyone not a fan of the Saudi Arabian club Al Hilal, had to be pleased with this result: Western Sydney Wanderers 1, Al Hilal 0, aggregate, in the Asian Champions League final. A great victory for Western Sydney, a club formed only two years ago, and the first ACL title for an […]

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