After 150 miles on Southern California freeways the past two days, following most of two years driving in the UAE, I am fairly confident in writing this: Driving is a lot less scary here than in the UAE — where in 2010 the second-leading cause of death was “road injury”. Some obseverations.

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Day 1 of a Southern California visit. Almost as warm as Abu Dhabi. Not nearly as wet.

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Yes. I know. Tales of long/delayed/strange plane rides generally are of interest only to the people who suffer through them. But this one was particularly odd and exotic. Really. Trust me. How often have you flown over Greenland? Not just the tip of Greenland, like, 500 miles of it right in the middle?

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This actually is a handy compilation of information, if you are planning to visit the United Arab Emirates sometime soon. And you probably are not planning any such thing, if you live in the States. It’s just too far. But this should be required reading for Europeans and, in particular, for Britons and Russians, who […]

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Sometimes someone says something that makes so much sense, you have to share it. So it was with Queen Rania of Jordan, who at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit this week said Arab and Muslim extremists are using social media to drown out the peaceful majority. “A minority … is using social media to rewrite […]

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We have known from early in our stay, here in the UAE, that the U.S. Air Force has a base not far from Abu Dhabi. It is the Al Dhafra base, on the mainland. Maybe a half-hour drive from Abu Dhabi Island. The name is easy to remember because a soccer team in the Arabian […]

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It often turns out this way, in the news biz. Weeks of making something out of nothing. And then a stretch of time where you have big events colliding on the calendar. This is one of those “colliding big events” weeks, here in the UAE. Four events that pretty safely fall into our top 10 […]

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I am not an economist. Nor do I play one on TV. But I have a sense that we are in a bit of a boom time, here in the UAE. Certainly, in Abu Dhabi. We arrived in 2009, which was pretty much the bottom of the global economic crisis. And things were going on […]

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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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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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