Arab Nations

Qatar, a glittering peninsula of skyscrapers and sand, reminds one of a well-dressed, ambitious little guy playing all the angles in a rough neighborhood. Its pushy rise to prominence is creating suspicion and hardening the Middle East split between moderate U.S. allies and more militant nations.

President Bush's accommodations are never shabby when he travels abroad. But consider life at his hotel in Abu Dhabi, where a run-of-the-mill suite can go for $1,595 a night. He was, a White House aide indicated, assigned one of the eight "Ruler's Suites" at the Emirates Palace Hotel on Sunday night. The suites are made available only to those who Sheik Khalifa ibn Zayed al Nuhayyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi and president of the United Arab Emirates, says may stay there.

For kids -- and parents too -- it may be the ultimate play land: a 10-square-mile, $64-billion zone with amusement parks by Six Flags, DreamWorks Animation and Universal Studios, plus museums, shopping and 55 hotels. ? At twice the size of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., this is a place where it's hard to imagine getting bored.

cairo -- It was a boyhood of miniskirts and stern-faced imams. As Ahmed abu Haiba grew into a man, he felt a kinship with the clerics who recited the Koran in badly lighted television studios, but he feared they didn't stand a chance against the new Western temptations of pop divas pouting about carnal pleasures and broken hearts.

In vivid contrast to his effusive stopover in Israel, President Bush ended a five-day Middle East trip on Sunday by criticizing Arab nations for political repression and urging them toward economic reforms and women's rights. The president's speech at the World Economic Forum in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik crystallized an approach that in Arab eyes stubbornly favors Israel over their own concerns and interests.

It is a season of egos, high-priced commercials, historical epics, strange comedies and prickly off-camera dramas involving Iranian makeup artists, Syrian directors and Egyptian movie stars. Ramadan may be a month of prayer, fasting and virtue in the Muslim world, but it is a less than holy time on TV.

Africa's abundant natural resources have long invited foreign exploitation. Over generations, foreign empires and companies stripped the continent of its gold and diamonds, then its oil. Rubber and ivory were plundered from Congo. Even Africa's people were exploited: captured and sold into slavery abroad. Now foreigners are enjoined in a new scramble in Africa. The latest craze? Food.

A popular Sunni Muslim cleric with a television show and a website that churns out religious edicts and dieting tips agitated centuries-old animosities in the Islamic world recently by referring to Shiite Muslims as heretics seeking to invade Sunni societies.

Israel accused North Korea on Saturday of covertly supplying at least half a dozen Middle East countries with nuclear technology or conventional arms. The allegation was made at an International Atomic Energy Agency meeting in Vienna, where world powers urged North Korea to stop reactivation of its nuclear weapons program. "The Middle East remains on the receiving end of the DPRK's reckless activities," Israeli delegate David Danieli said at the meeting.

Despising America has long been a Middle East pastime, but then the country that brought war to Iraq and orange-suited prisoners to Guantanamo Bay elected a Facebook-friendly president who speaks in poems. What's a mullah to do? With the speed of a Twitter missive, the cultural game has shifted. Barack Obama's rise to the White House comes when the Arabs are intensely suspicious of U.S. intentions, and when Islam, through satellite TV and the Internet, is inundated with Western culture.