United Arab Emirates

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

GEOGRAPHY QUIZ-- The city of Abu Dhabi is located on a small island that is part of what country? (Answer below) Quiz answer (FROM ABOVE) United Arab Emirates. Source: National Geographic Bee

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Months before the invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein tentatively accepted a proposal to go into exile and avert war, but Arab leaders scuttled the deal, unable to reach consensus on it, senior officials in the United Arab Emirates said this week. Sheik Muhammad bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and son of the late president, Sheik Zayed al-Nahyan, told the pan-Arab news channel Al Arabiya that his father had received tentative acceptance from Hussein to go into exile before the invasion of Iraq, in exchange for amnesty and protection.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Along a seemingly endless row of identical gray warehouses, a lone guard stands watch over a shuttered storage area with a peeling green and yellow sign: Euro Gulf Trading. Three months ago, when the authorities announced that they had seized a large cache of counterfeit drugs from Euro Gulf's warehouse deep inside a sprawling free-trade zone here, they gave no hint of the raid's global significance. But an examination of the case reveals its link to a complex supply chain of fake drugs that ran from mainland China through Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, Britain and the Bahamas, ultimately leading to an Internet pharmacy whose American customers believed they were buying medicine from Canada, according to interviews with regulators and drug company investigators in six countries.

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates -- First lady Laura Bush came to the Middle East this week to raise breast cancer awareness, but her mission has been couched in a gracious plea for mutual understanding and world peace. At each stop along her journey, which by week's end will have included the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan, Mrs. Bush has managed a quiet coup of diplomacy. The topic may be breast cancer, but the message is healing in a broader sense. In a world that at times seems impossibly at odds, what could be more unifying than shared concern about a disease that ravages mothers, sisters and wives?

Tennis Federer advances to Dubai Open final Roger Federer beat Tommy Haas in straight sets, 6-4, 7-5, to reach his fifth straight Dubai Open final in the United Arab Emirates. Federer will face Mikhail Youzhny, who reached his second straight tournament final by beating Sweden's Robin Soderling, 7-5, 6-2. ATP Tennis Channel Open -- Top-seeded James Blake was removed from the quarterfinals in Las Vegas after ATP Tour officials reversed a ruling that had allowed him to advance due to a competitor's withdrawal during round-robin play.

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.

GEOGRAPHY QUIZ-- The city of Abu Dhabi is located on a small island that is part of what country? (Answer below) Quiz answer (FROM ABOVE) United Arab Emirates. Source: National Geographic Bee

WASHINGTON -- Bowing to extreme public and political pressure, a United Arab Emirates company said yesterday that it would give up its management stake in U.S. seaports, including Baltimore's, rather than continue to fight what increasingly appeared to be a lost battle. For more than three weeks, the pending sale of British-owned Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. to state-owned Dubai Ports World has generated controversy, splitting many congressional Republicans - especially in the House of Representatives - from President Bush, who had said repeatedly that he supported the deal.

A Maryland caviar importer who used a far-reaching smuggling scheme to skirt conservation laws agreed yesterday to pay a $10.4 million criminal fine, the biggest ever in a federal wildlife case. The fine against the company, U.S. Caviar and Caviar Ltd., was part of a plea bargain entered yesterday in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt. Three company officials will also get jail sentences for smuggling thousands of pounds of Russian sturgeon roe worth millions of dollars into the United States.

There was no uproar when it was a British company that was taking over commercial port operations in Baltimore and five other U.S. cities. But now that a company from the United Arab Emirates is stepping in, James Zogby says, politicians from both parties are playing on anxieties about terrorism in hopes of scoring at the polls. "There's no question that this is the confluence of three factors: an election year, fear and the fact that an Arab country is involved," the president of the Arab American Institute said yesterday.

WASHINGTON -- In a rare slap at President Bush, a powerful Republican-controlled House committee voted overwhelmingly yesterday to torpedo a deal allowing a United Arab Emirates company to take control of some operations at the port of Baltimore and five other major seaports. House Republicans, wary of ceding the pivotal issue of national security to Democrats in an election year, ignored a veto threat from Bush to approve, 62-2, a measure that would bar Dubai Ports World from taking over leases or contracts at U.S. ports.

After three weeks of absorbing heavy criticism, the companies involved in a deal that would shift work at six U.S. ports from a British-owned firm to one owned by the government of Dubai are building on their Washington lobbying effort with a high-powered public relations offensive in the port cities. Officials from P&O Ports North America Inc., a subsidiary of the British cargo company, made its first stop outside the entrance to Seagirt Marine Terminal yesterday, hours before a House panel voted to block the deal.