United Arab

Stepping up efforts to win business in Kuwait, Marylan companies will exhibit goods ranging from poultry to dredging ,, equipment at an American products trade show this week in the United Arab Emirates.About 25 Maryland businessmen are in Dubai to market their goods in an effort coordinated by the Kuwait Maryland Partnership, said William Touchard, the organization's vice president. In addition, the products of another 25 state companies are being marketed by members of the partnership, who are distributing company brochures and leaflets.

The jockey had raced an Arabian horse only once before and had never met the trainer before. The trainer, a former jockey himself, has never actually mounted an Arabian. The owner is an 18-year-old Shiek who, according to the trainer, knows very little about horses, even Arabians. Experience seemed to be insignificant when it comes to T M Fred Texas, the 5-year-old Arabian who followed a world championship in Dubai in March with a victory Saturday in the first President of United Emirates Cup at Pimlico Race Course . T M Texas paid $4.40.

Adnan Obaid Mohamed Al Zaabi thinks his country has a car theft problem. But the United Arab Emirates only has a handful every few months.While Zaabi believes homicide is a troubling issue, his tiny desert nation averages only one a year.So when the 33-year-old police captain from Abu Dhabi went for a ride with Baltimore police this week, he got a lesson in big-city crime.In four hours Wednesday, he accompanied police responding to a mugging and to a family squabble, went on a drug raid and watched an officer fight a bureaucracy that couldn't tell him whether his department had towed a 1986 Toyota.

Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, is sometimes upstaged by its neighbor, the uber glitzy Dubai, but that may be coming to an end as concerns about Dubai's debts grow. Abu Dhabi is expected to provide fiscal stability in the region, perhaps garnering more attention from tourists who prefer not worrying about the economic situation. And it can't hurt that Frommer's has named the city a top destination for 2010. Here are five things to do: 1 Get lost in a mosque : Visit Sheikh Zayed Mosque, one of the largest mosques in the world.

Lockheed Martin Corp. failed to hit the target yesterday for the fifth straight time with a high-profile Army missile system that it spent the past year trying to perfect. The $12 million test lasted 5.8 seconds.The failure of the system, which has come under harsh congressional scrutiny as a symbol of trouble in the nation's ballistic missile defense program, marred what could have been a grand day for the Bethesda company.Several hours after the disastrous New Mexico flight test, the United Arab Emirates agreed to a major purchase of F-16 fighter planes.

These are the forces participating in the effort to push Iraqi troops out of Kuwait:Land forcesUnited States, Britain, Saudi Arabia, France, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Syria, Kuwait, Egypt.Air forcesUnited States, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Kuwait, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar.Naval forcesUnited States, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait.

PARAMUS, N.J. -- Toys "R" Us Inc. said it will open 115 new company-owned stores and expand into the Middle East with franchised stores in 1994 as part of the largest expansion program in the company's history.In addition, the toy company said that it will make an investment of another sort by repurchasing $1 billion of its common stock.The world's largest children's specialty retailing chain recently created a franchising division to enable it to accelerate the expansion of the Toys "R" Us concept throughout the world.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- As the United States moves to further isolate what it regards as the outlaw regime in Iran, it is finding it difficult to recruit to the cause those countries seemingly most directly threatened, the oil-rich Arab states on the Persian Gulf.Out on what one Arab official calls "the front line" of potential confrontation with Tehran, the United States' allies in the Persian Gulf war -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates -- are pursuing their own policies on Iran, and not always in step with Washington.

ALMOST EVERYTHING Americans buy is now made outside America. You knew that long ago. I knew it too, but I hadn't really believed it until various women took me shopping in December.This meant killing time in women's wear divisions of assorted marts. What a learning experience these marts afforded. I'd heard that marts were taking over the world, but I had never thought enough about marts to ask, "What is a mart anyhow?"Nothing beats on-site inspection. As a result I now know that a mart is a store selling goods made almost exclusively in Asia and Central America.

Geneva, Switzerland -- It is going to be interesting, to say the least, to see how the Beijing women's conference -- starting Sept. 4 -- is going to deal with the problem of women who beat up on other women. This is not a burning issue for the liberationists, who are not much in the business of drawing attention to the sins of the sisters. Nor is it on the agenda of the traditionalists, who tend to downplay the miseries of the kitchen sink. But it must be talked about in Beijing, for this is one of the rare opportunities when the subject can be aired before an international audience.

MIAMI -- The rich rulers of the United Arab Emirates might be fans of camel racing, but the sheiks say they don't enslave children as riders for their country's popular sport. On Friday, they launched a legal and media counteroffensive against a lawsuit filed this fall in Miami federal court that accused them of forcing boys to become jockeys. Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the UAE prime minister, and his brother, Sheik Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum, the emirates' finance minister, sought the dismissal of the proposed class action case and unveiled a Web page, www.dubai cameljockeys.

Days after Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. said he was exploring options to block the sale of port of Baltimore operations to a United Arab Emirates company, members of his administration said the governor has no position on whether the deal should go through. The sale of operations contracts for six East Coast ports, strongly backed by the Bush administration, has riled members of both parties in Congress and in state and local governments. On Wednesday, Mayor Martin O'Malley sent Ehrlich a letter asking that he co-sign an appeal to Bush to stop the deal, but Ehrlich press secretary Greg Massoni said the governor wouldn't do so. "It's a political document," Massoni said yesterday.

Mayor Martin O'Malley joined yesterday the growing number of politicians condemning a business deal that would put a company controlled by the United Arab Emirates in charge of running certain port operations in Baltimore and a handful of other U.S. cities. "It's outrageous and irresponsible to turn over a port to any foreign government," O'Malley said during a chilly, outdoor news conference in Canton, where port buildings were visible across the harbor. O'Malley, a Democratic candidate for governor, sharply criticized the Bush administration for signing off on the deal.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. investigators were given the first name and telephone number of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers 2 1/2 years before the terror attacks, but the United States appears to have failed to aggressively pursue the lead, according to U.S. and German officials. The information -- the earliest known signal that the United States received about any of the hijackers -- has become an important element of an independent commission's investigation into the events of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said yesterday.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Every day, millions of dollars sluice through bank accounts held in luminescent office towers overlooking the Persian Gulf, testimony to how this old trading port, with its lucrative oil supplies starting to run thin, has recast itself as the ultramodern Switzerland of the Arab world. But Western law enforcement and intelligence officials say Dubai's free-wheeling financial environment - a mix of modern wealth and ancient commerce - has allowed the country to become an important crossroads for financing terrorism.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Afghanistan's Taliban leadership lost one of its few links to the outside world yesterday when the United Arab Emirates, one of the three nations that officially recognized the regime, severed diplomatic relations. The move added pressure to the fundamentalist Islamic regime as the United States maintained its demand that Afghanistan hand over suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden. Afghanistan's government, which has sheltered bin Laden, is now formally recognized by just two nations: Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

AMMAN, Jordan -- Nasser Latuff is a pharmacist, and he, his country and his region are suffering a painful withdrawal from matters as addictive as powerful drugs.One of the drugs was Saddam Hussein. People were attracted by the Iraqi president's promise a year ago to humble the United States and to bring greatness to Arabs. Then came Iraq's quick military defeat and the arrival in Jordan of a flood of Palestinians expelled from Kuwait."I'm still so depressed," said Mr. Latuff, who had hoped for a different outcome to the war. "It's like taking amphetamines and then you have a crash."

WASHINGTON -- U.S. investigators were given the first name and telephone number of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers 2 1/2 years before the terror attacks, but the United States appears to have failed to aggressively pursue the lead, according to U.S. and German officials. The information -- the earliest known signal that the United States received about any of the hijackers -- has become an important element of an independent commission's investigation into the events of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said yesterday.

Mohammad Mansour is an Arab, and Levy Rabinson is a Jew. They think of themselves as much more than that, of course. They're fathers and businessmen, and each is a certified public accountant. But both men say that much of their lives is defined by their ethnicity because they live in Israel - where Jews mix with Jews, Arabs mix with Arabs and exceptions are almost always awkward and strained. It's a reality of life in their part of the world, and an intractable one. It's also bad for business, so they want it to change.

Adnan Obaid Mohamed Al Zaabi thinks his country has a car theft problem. But the United Arab Emirates only has a handful every few months.While Zaabi believes homicide is a troubling issue, his tiny desert nation averages only one a year.So when the 33-year-old police captain from Abu Dhabi went for a ride with Baltimore police this week, he got a lesson in big-city crime.In four hours Wednesday, he accompanied police responding to a mugging and to a family squabble, went on a drug raid and watched an officer fight a bureaucracy that couldn't tell him whether his department had towed a 1986 Toyota.