This was a story that developed overnight. Or perhaps it is more correct to describe it as “speculation that morphed into quasi-news” overnight. This out of Argentina: The Iraqi Football Association was about to hire Diego Maradona as coach of its national team, which remains in contention for a 2014 World Cup berth. This out […]

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I have read all 17 of the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child, and I have been waiting for the franchise to shift to the big screen. And I was one of the, oh, 99 percent of Reacher fans who was … what is the best word for this? … horrified by the choice of […]

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In a previous life as a Southern Californian, I remember being told how bad we all were at driving in the rain. And, collectively, SoCal people probably are bad at it. People living there expect their roads to be dry and grippy … because 340 days a year they are. What then to expect from […]

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Expats arrive in the UAE, and they hear about camel beauty contests, and they assume it must be a joke. To the average human, camels are remarkably homely. A horse? Now there is a sleek animal. But a camel? It may rank with the hyena as the ugliest land animal around. Turns out, camel beauty […]

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I admire a well-run sports team as much as the next guy, and probably more so, since I have spent nearly the whole of my adult life covering sports teams. The Green Bay Packers, once upon a time. The New York Yankees from about 1920 to 1964. Yes, even the Boston Celtics, back when they […]

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Bringing in new people, expats, to work at The National is not a simple process. Which is understandable. The logistics are daunting. A security check. Negotiations over pay. Explanations of policies and benefits. The prospective employees needing time to make an important decision, doing their due diligence on the paper, the company, the country. Then […]

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What does a newspaper do when it has a big story on Day 1? It looks for ways to carry forward the narrative on Day 2. While your competitors are scrambling to catch up, or trying to knock down your story, you push it even further along. So, for this morning’s newspaper, we had David […]

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In journalism, some days just turn weird. You think you know how things will go. It seems slow. Routine. Boring. At the 4 p.m. news meeting I all but said “sorry, folks, sports is dull today …” And four hours later I was in a cab in the posh northwest corner of Abu Dhabi island, […]

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Abu Dhabi is not crime free. It just seems like it. Violence is rare. Murder is particularly unusual. Someone attacking his three roommates with a chainsaw and a cleaver, and chopping them into tiny bits … just doesn’t happen here. Except when it does.

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We saw Argo, the Ben Affleck/Iran hostages movie, last night. (It came late to the UAE.) And if the film resonated back in the States, magnify that by two or three for those of us living about a 30-minute plane ride from Iran. Our concerns, here in the UAE, that we are at special risk […]

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