Charles suggests McDonalds ban

"LONDON - Prince Charles suggested Tuesday on a visit to the United Arab Emirates that banning McDonald's fast food was crucial for improving people's diets, a British news agency reported.

Charles made the comments while visiting the Imperial College London Diabetes Center in Abu Dhabi for the launch of a public health campaign, The Press Association reported.

"Have you got anywhere with McDonald's? Have you tried getting it banned? That's the key," Charles was quoted as asking one of the center's nutritionists.

A McDonald's spokesman, Nick Hindle, called the remark disappointing. He said other members of the royal family "have probably got a more up-to-date picture of us," alluding to reports that Charles' son, Prince Harry, was spotted eating a chicken burger at McDonald's in 2005."

-- more HERE

No word on his thoughts regarding Jabal Al Noor or Antar Cafeteria yet

Jumeira Islamic Learning Centre

Workshop on Youth Issues at Jumeirah Islamic Learning Centre

Thursday 01/03/2007

Timing: 8.30pm-10.30pm

+ Friday 02/03/2007

Timing: 4.30pm-8.30pm

Tel & Fax : 04 394 94 61
Mail: sara_ina@yahoo.com
SMS: 050 6326937

How to blog it

Is blogging here like the West? No of course not, but that's the point; understand what's possible, and what will cause you strife, and your blogging future should remain bright.

So concludes ArabianBusiness.com journalist Matthew Wade's article on blogging in the region.

Read it here.

Browser Wars

What is the preference of the UAE's bloggers?

Disclaimer: Ignore this post if you couldn't care less about techie matters.

I recently came across a report on the popularity of browsers, as I debate to myself whether Firefox or Safari is better. As far as I'm concerned IE is out of the running, despite its 79.75% market share. I'm leaning toward Firefox. Anyone using Opera--and is there anything else out there? Oh yeah, there's AOL too.

when even death is funny

It's a rainy day in Gaza, and I'm working from home, leaving my colleague to the misery of our dank, muddy office. He's called me a few times out of desperation (he says it's news but secretely knows that the 5th release by the Popular Struggle Front on not joining the unity government is not news). The bordedom though, made him find these Gazan jokes, still funny in English _ even if I can't read them out with that distinct hyper-macho Gazan accent.

A Gazan woman is praising her boyfriend, "you're the hero, you're the strong one..." He says, without blinking, "of course, I was even a martyr!"

Israel clamps a curfew on Gaza...and Gazans go out onto the streets, to see what's going on

Hebron, Nablus and Gaza decide to build a connecting bridge between them. The Nablusis volunteer the stones, the Hebronites the cement and the Gazans, the steel.

A week after the bridge is built, it collapses over everybody's head.

"What a waste of stones!" laments the Nablusi

"What a waste of cement!" laments the Hebronite

"Good thing we didn't use the steel, eh?" one Gazan said to another, "otherwise it would have been wasted as well!"

A Gazan woman wanted to appear modern. She drank coffee with a straw.

Apart from that, it's the usual Gazan misery around here. Thank God though, for a Gazan sense of humour. Although, knowing a Gazans' luck, they'd die of laughter.

An interview with Minister of Economy Lubna Al Qasimi

In the McKinsey Quarterly (free reg. req.)

UAE releases cancer vaccine

The UAE is the first country in the Middle East to release the HPV (Human Papilloma virus) vaccination “Gardasil” according to Dubai Health News. It protects against the two strains of HPV that are responsible for approximately 70% of Cervical cancer cases in women. According to UAE’s Cancer Registry Program, the annual average of the reported cervical cancer cases has tripled in 2005 when compared with that from 1998-2004.

Gardasil has come under attack in the USA as religious and parent groups resist mandated vaccinations of young girls. Meanwhile, in Australia where the vaccine was developed, the government is planning on spending over $436 million on programmes to vaccinate young girls with an ongoing cost of under $50 million per year.

The UAE’s Ministry of Health has approved the vaccine and it is available now, though no government subsidies are offered. The treatment consists of 3 injections over a 6 month period with a total cost of approximately 1860 dirhams and is available through most GP's and medical centres.

The Political Culture of Leadership in the United Arab Emirates

Title of a book coming out in March.

Police Salary raise

Congratulations for police staff for the new salary raise.

Lieutenant -General 69,000 AED
Brigadier General 54,800 AED
Brigadier 45,500 AED
Colonel 40,000 AED
Lieutenant Colonel 35,000 AED
Major 29,500 AED
Captain 25,000 AED
First Lieutenant 22,000 AED
lieutenant 20,000 AED

Senior managers allowance but the percentage hasn't been mentioned
Tickets allowance between 2,000 to 55,000 AED annually depending on the rank
Cars allowance between 200,000 to 350,000 AED for senior managerial ranks
Work environment allowance between 0% to 40% of the basic salary (which is 50% of the total salary)


Lower ranks get between 6,500 to14,800 AED

AIDS is a pleasure

The spelling mistakes, grammar errors and the general decline in quality in recent years in everything offered by the eServices Division in the Dubai eGov initiative has spread to SMS messages.

The Arabic Edition of Emirates Today [page 2] claims that a number of mobile users have received a public advertisement stating that "AIDS is a pleasure" from the Dubai eGov Offices. Though it seems that the message itself is a part of a nation wide campaign to raise awareness about the disease, the eGov office has managed to butch this up as well.

Arab states send message to Iran

New York Times -

As fears grow over the escalating confrontation between Iran and the West, Arab states across the Persian Gulf have begun a rare show of muscle flexing, publicly advertising a shopping spree for new weapons and openly discussing their security concerns.
...
“There has always been an acknowledgment of the threat in the region, but the volume of the debate has now risen,” said one United Arab Emirates official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the subject. “Now the message is there’s a dialogue going on with Iran, but that doesn’t mean I don’t intend to defend myself.”
...
“The message is first, ‘U.S., stay involved here,’ and second, ‘Iran, we will maintain a technological edge no matter what,’ ” said Emile el-Hokayem, research fellow at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a research center based in Washington. “They are trying to reinforce the credibility of the threat of force.”
...
“They have been doing these kinds of purchases since the ’90s,” said Marwan Lahoud, chief executive of the European missile maker MBDA. “What has changed is they are stating it publicly. The other side is making pronouncements so they have to as well,” he said, speaking of Iran’s recent announcements about its weapons capacity.

My emphasis in the last paragraph quoted. For deterrence to work you need to know your opponent knows what you will do if attacked. That is a key to the plot of the movie Dr. Strangelove influenced by Economics Nobel prize winner Thomas Schelling.

The Times article has another thread -- the Arab Gulf states continue to lean on the US for defense. Reading between the lines of the story I see the hint of the suggestion that Arab Gulf states are building up not just because of increasing threats from Iran, but from the increasing likelihood that the US presence in the Gulf will diminish in the future.

PSA

There was a bit of a backlog on the blogroll additions list, I have now sorted this out.
A few notes:

• If starting a new blog, I seriously suggest the title of your blog and the URL are identical or as close as technically permitted; the number of blogs I managed to confuse within seconds of reading their information was astounding.
• No blogs with absolutely no relevance to the UAE will be added; if you live in the UAE (or in some cases have lived in the UAE), or blog about the UAE, your blog is welcome. There were several requests for obvious spam-blogs to be added to the blog rolls and these were ignored.
• It's quite helpful that when requesting your blog is added to the blogrolls you include an address for the blog in question, there were at least two people who left anonymous messages asking for their blog to be added.

Also, On the first week of March I will be going through the entire blogrolls reviewing each blog, if you have not posted at least once in 2007, your blog will be removed.

Hosni no Likey Free Speechy

"Dictator? Hell, no. He's just like me, a decider, makin' decisions for his people..."

GULF NEWS reported yesterday that an Egyptian Blogger was tossed in jail for calling Hosni Mubarak a "dictator."

Personally, if it were me I would have removed the "tator" syllable -- but then again -- I'm not particularly known for my social graces...

Tales From the Metro

When and where was the last time you rode in a metro--if ever? Might be nice for some of us to share our experiences as we dream of what the Metro will be like in Dubai.

I believe my last time was in Los Angeles in 2005. It had some of the typically American idiosyncrasies. One could take it from the LA international airport, but it was by design rather less than convenient.

You had to take a bus from the terminal a mile or two away and wait in what seemed like a derelict, dangerous part of town for the train to arrive. Once on the train you had to contend with the occasional drunk and rowdy teenagers. And of course there was no direct run to the center of the business district. One had to get off and change to another train in an even more dangerous looking neighborhood than the first.

Let's hope Dubai's system will be a lot more convenient and appealing.

To feel more at ease I struck up a conversation with a fellow traveler, who seemed like a safer bet to approach. I was the Japanese-speaking American resident of the UAE trying to make friends with an English-speaking Japanese resident of Boston, Mass. I remarked that at least the station we were waiting at had cop cars around it. She said they were there because it was an especially high crime area. On my return to the airport later in the day, the cop cars had been joined by a police helicopter. Not the most comfortable entrance and exit in and out of LA.

Impact of Print News

How significant is the impact of Gulf News and other popular publications on government policy and other forces of change in society? Yesterday a GN headline read, Freehold buyers face hidden costs, and today, Dubai to investigate service charges for freehold units. Wow! That's impressive.

Most readers here will probably recall the pair of news stories a couple of weeks ago when a German tourist cum heart-surgery patient was found penniless, sleeping on a beach, only to be rescued 2-days later by GN readers and resurrected on the newspaper's front page, all smiles.

Again, wow! How many others would love to see their trials and tribulations spread across the front page leading to swift resolution of their problems?

Back to the freehold articles, the more recent one reports,

If homeowners already holding title deeds wish to transfer their property to another party, they must produce a "no objection certificate" supplied by the developer. Nakheel says it charges Dh1,000 for this service, while Emaar Properties levies a Dh5,000 fee.

That is just outrageous. Government should look into such practices. Kudos to GN for exposing them and putting on the pressure.

BTW: I love the way linking allows one to reference this or that story so easily with sources and additional content. But have any of you noticed how the online news sites (particularly GN, with which I'm most familiar) fail glaringly to do so. They'll even reference a website in an article and not provide a simple link to it. Why not provide a link to the organization it (GN) refers to in the Ghaf tree story? Why not even provide a link from today's freehold story to yesterday's? Come on, guys--get with the online groove.