The growth of the UAE’s two big cities continues to intrigue outsiders, particularly those with cameras. Some are more than tourists with camera-phones. This has led to some impressive time-lapse photography of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and now we have a new addition to the canon — an English photographer’s “flow motion” rendering of a […]

[Read more →]

And no, it’s not “Happy Valentine’s Day!” The sweetest words of February are some variation of this email headline from a Dodgers media release received today: PITCHERS AND CATCHERS REPORT TO SPRING TRAINING All that’s missing is an exclamation point. Ah … baseball is coming back, and all is right with the world.

[Read more →]

Fifty Shades of Grey, a bad book and now a bad movie, will not be coming to the UAE. Not unless the movie’s distributors make 35 minutes of cuts from its 125 minutes of running time. The movie is not banned from the UAE. UAE authorities are happy to have it appear here — as […]

[Read more →]

Let’s start this with one of those achievement test-y questions. Which of these four names does not belong? 1. Sandy Koufax 2. Justin Turner 3. Fernando Valenzuela 4. Vin Scully Too easy!

[Read more →]

The two times I have seen Zach LaVine on a basketball court he looked like a world-beater. I was at Staples Center, back in November, when he scored 28 points on 11-of-14 shooting, including 4-of-4 from three-point range, in a one-point victory over the Lakers. And then I saw LaVine’s impressive victory in the Slam […]

[Read more →]

Friday the 13th does not come up much in the UAE. In the U.S., certainly, hardly a Friday the 13th can go by without media taking note. Watch out! Bad things can happen! Snicker-snicker. Just kidding! Not really! Arabs apparently don’t worry much about the number 13 landing on a Friday. Which makes sense, given […]

[Read more →]

We edit and write in British English, here at The National, in Abu Dhabi. Which can be tricky. And sometimes annoying. But the newspaper made one decision back before the launch, in April of 2008, that is brilliant. No diacritical marks. Ever. Expedient? You bet. Sensible? Absolutely. Hence, none of this in our pages:

[Read more →]

Jerry Tarkanian died today at the age of 84, and the volume of pieces written about him by sports journalists has been impressive. Nearly all of it, however, focuses on his time at UNLV, which certainly was interesting, and lasted 19 seasons. For me, however, he will always be the coach who put Long Beach […]

[Read more →]

India is home to more than 1.2 billion people. You would think that 11 of them would be decent soccer players. You would be wrong. I was reminded of this today when the Asian Football Confederation did its draw for the first round of 2018 World Cup qualifying. And India, with its 1.2 billion people, […]

[Read more →]

This pretty much had to happen in Dubai. If a real estate scheme seems crazy or impractical, and will cost a lot of money but also garner scads of attention … Dubai is ready and willing. The latest? Underwater homes. Which followed on …

[Read more →]