Tag Archives: Dubai

Reuters reports: Elon Musk’s The Boring Company and Dubai’s Road and Transport Authority (RTA) have signed an initial agreement to build the Dubai Loop, an underground high-speed transport network spanning 17km (10.6 miles), they said on Friday. The United Arab Emirates’ Artificial Intelligence Minister, Omar Al Olama, announced the project on a video interview with Elon Musk during the World …

Knewz reports: Former Donald Trump presidential campaign chair and once-convicted felon Paul Manafort was removed from a Miami flight bound for Dubai on March 20, officials confirmed. Manafort was convicted in federal court of tax and bank fraud and ordered to serve a term in prison. He was released in May 2020 and pardoned by Trump before he left office …

The BBC reports: Matt Healy, the frontman of Brit Award-winning band The 1975, has defied Dubai’s anti-LGBTQ laws by kissing a male audience member during a gig. Fan footage showed Healy venturing into the crowd and kissing a man on the lips, to loud cheers, on Wednesday. He is then seen returning to the stage and declaring: “I love you …

Mother Jones reports: Donald Trump has pledged to keep his distance from his businesses and vowed that his company would not enter into any new foreign deals during his presidency. But during the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump hobnobbed with at least one of his foreign business partners, Dubai billionaire Hussain Sajwani, once again highlighting the blurry lines …

The Associated Press reports: Fire broke out Thursday in a residential building near Dubai’s massive New Year’s Eve fireworks display. It was not immediately clear what caused the fire, which ran up at least 20 stories of the building near the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper at 828 meters (905 yards). Burning debris rained down from the building as …

The fifth-tallest residential building on the world is on fire in Dubai at this writing. The 80-story building is called the Marina Torch and was completed in 2011. Daytime photos of the building are here. Gulf News reports: People being rescued from the tower with smoke inhalation injuries. A resident said the fire alarm went off at 2.05am. “There have …

That’s (sort of) the view from atop the world’s tallest building, Dubai’s 160-story Burj Khalifa. Gizmodo has the deets on how the photo was made. By the way, it can cost up to $100 to visit the observation deck.  Here are some of the records the building has set.

Undercover cops are working Dubai’s chat rooms to bust gay men for trying to hookup online. The National reports that one 22 year old man is charged with prostitution, consensual homosexual sex, producing pornographic material, cross-dressing and insulting religion, while the second, an 18-year-old student, is facing prostitution charges. Homosexuality is illegal in the United Arab Emirates, and if found …

More than twice as tall as the Empire State, the Burj Dubai officially opens today in a heavy cloak of security. Dubai is set to open the world’s tallest building Monday as the city seeks to revitalize its economy after a debt crisis in 2009 that forced the once-hot financial center to turn to neighboring Abu Dhabi for help. The …

Gizmodo notes that the Burj Dubai, “the world’s tallest, most absurdly ostentatious building,” has become the literal lightening rod of the Middle East. That lightning seeks out the Burj Dubai isn’t particularly surprising; the Empire State Building gets hit all the time. But given the relative infrequency of electrical storms in that region of the world, folks are starting to …

The glittering city-state of Dubai, home to uncountable brand new skyscrapers and whimsical artificial islands, has asked for a six month reprieve on its $60B debt, sending the world’s markets into something of a tumble. Wall Street turned sharply lower at the open on Friday, as traders scrambled to play catch-up after sharp downturns in Asian and European markets over …

The two shots below are computer renderings of the view from the Empire State Building and what the view would be, were the ESB as tall as the almost-completed Burj Dubai, which is over 1000 feet taller even though Dubai suffers no lack of available land, relative to Manhattan. More comparisons are here. As a skyscraper junkie, I’d love to …

The construction boom town of Dubai, where 200 fantastically tall skyscrapers have been started in the last five years, is emptying out of foreigners who fear being sent to debtors prison for defaulting on their home loans. With Dubai’s economy in free fall, newspapers have reported that more than 3,000 cars sit abandoned in the parking lot at the Dubai …

To great fanfare, today Emirates Airlines begins nonstop flights between San Francisco and Dubai. However, the SF Chronicle points out that the airline’s rules specify that it will not hire openly gay flight attendants – making the company in violation of laws regarding any entity that does business with the city. The airline, which is run by the government of …