Dubai

When Salem Moosa looks out over the skyscrapers spreading like a metallic rash over the sand, this is what he sees: The Eiffel Tower. The Pyramids. The Taj Mahal. He's angling to build all of them -- but bigger than the originals. And, if you ask Moosa, perhaps even better. Moosa's constellation of head-scratching oddities would join the marvels already cropping up like mushrooms across Dubai. The man-made islands in the shape of palm trees. The indoor ski resort. The underwater hotel.

This fall, getting halfway around the world will be a lot easier, if you think 16 hours on a plane is easy. Emirates Airlines will start nonstop service between Los Angeles International Airport and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on Sept. 1, the carrier said Thursday. Emirates will use Boeing Co.'s new 777-200LR, which has the longest range of any jetliner. "L.A. represents Emirates' commitment to the American market," said Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, the airline's chief executive and the uncle of the ruler of Dubai.

The British luxury cruise ship Queen Elizabeth 2 arrived in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where it will become a floating hotel moored off an artificial palm-shaped island. More than 60 naval vessels and private boats met the 70,000-ton ship. Officials said the ship's transformation would take two to three years. The Queen's Room, the captain's quarters and the bridge are to be preserved in their original form.

Venus Williams gathered in another big trophy Saturday, defeating Virginia Razzano to win the $2-million Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships in the United Arab Emirates. It was her 40th title, a wonderful feat, but if justice is the guide that it should be, this was a title nobody should have won. In fact, not a single match should have been contested at the Dubai tournament last week.

Although little known in the United States, Emirates Airlines -- based in Dubai -- is the world's fastest-growing carrier and hopes to be the world's largest airline by 2015. "It's only a matter of time," said Sheik Ahmed bin Saeed al Maktoum, the chairman and chief executive of Emirates and the uncle of the ruler of Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates. Most of the airline's growth until recently has been along routes over the Atlantic and in the Middle East.

Be warned: Spitting here could get you deported. We're not talking just any kind of spit. In this case, it's the red-tinted juice of a popular Asian leaf that's causing the fuss as Dubai tries to buff the image of its less-posh districts. The crackdown -- announced last month amid a broader effort to stem behavior deemed offensive -- has stirred an unusual Arab-Asian culture clash in a city where the friction is often between Western ways grating against conservative Gulf sensibilities.

Last week's announcement that Dubai will be the site of a new $2.2-billion Universal theme park is only the latest sign that the small Persian Gulf emirate thinks big. In just 15 years, with the help of hundreds of thousands of imported laborers, the rulers of Dubai have built a modern city of skyscrapers, gleaming hotels and 10-lane highways along its desert coastline. Some estimate that one-fifth of the world's construction cranes are working in Dubai.

Dubai will be first country in the Middle East to test General Motors Corp.'s "green" cars as the United Arab Emirates seeks to cast off its reputation as the world's biggest polluter. In Abu Dhabi, GM executive Mary Beth Stanek said the company would bring 10 hybrid cars to Dubai next month for testing by police and taxis. The U.A.E. emits more pollution per capita than any other country, according to the World Wildlife Fund's "Living Planet" report of October 2006.

In the scorching deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, water is always precious, carefully rationed, never wasted. Possessing it separates life from death. What a difference a few miles -- and bucket loads of money -- can make. At Atlantis, the Palm, Dubai's latest and possibly greatest luxury hotel to date, water is an ornament and a plaything. It flows in ridiculous, seemingly endless quantities, simply for the pleasure of it.

Christopher Hawthorne's interesting and insightful piece on Dubai ("Desert Ripple," June 21) did us a service in separating the forest (the emerging urban form of clusters of unified development) from the trees (the individual buildings). More critical thought is needed to understand this emerging form of urbanism that is so different than is practiced in large U.S. cities. The Dubai experience is sometimes called the new "Middle East urbanism." This urbanism is expressed through large-scale projects, under single sponsorships, occurring all over the world being driven by the need to accommodate the urban growth rates in non-Western countries.

A Hamas military commander slain in a Dubai hotel room played a key role in smuggling antiaircraft missiles and other weapons into the Gaza Strip, Israeli and Hamas officials said Sunday. But they disagreed on whether Mahmoud Mabhouh's death would be a blow to Palestinian armed groups in the territory or inspire them to redouble their arms campaign. "This guy was a middleman for smuggling weapons from Iran, not only to Gaza but to Hezbollah" in Lebanon, said an Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues involved.

CAST: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon, Miley Cyrus, Penélope Cruz and Liza Minnelli. Written and directed by Michael Patrick King. BACK STORY: "I knew what I wanted the tone to be before I came up with the idea," King says. "The first film I felt had to be emotional and epic and have heartbreak in it. This one I wanted to be a big summer party, more along the road pictures of the '30s. I thought of the [economic] depression we're in and wanted to make a fun escapist movie."

Abu Dhabi rescued debt-ridden Dubai on Monday with a $10-billion bailout package that lifted world financial markets but left unclear how the glittering emirate by the sea would recover from investors' jitters and a troubled real estate market. The plan provides $4.1 billion to repay a bond that matured Monday for developer Nakheel, which is controlled by state-owned Dubai World. The intervention by oil-rich Abu Dhabi, the most influential state in the United Arab Emirates, was an attempt to save its fellow emirate and to prevent a prolonged financial crisis from rippling across the region.

The flashy spendthrift needs his prim, conservative neighbor to bail him out. Such is the situation between debt-ridden Dubai and flush Abu Dhabi, two Persian Gulf emirates with starkly different financial strategies and temperaments that may grudgingly need each other to prevent long-term investor panic from spreading beyond the United Arab Emirates. Dubai's $80-billion debt, nearly $60 billion of it held by the investment conglomerate Dubai World, is testament to the emirate's overextended reliance on a real estate market whose fortunes tumbled in the global downturn.

Dubai is a clever blend of audacity and architecture, a shiny monument to the egos and ambition that turned a tiny emirate into a Middle East financial giant. Russian oligarchs stroll along man-made islands shaped like palm trees, and sheiks race down a ski slope built inside a shopping mall. Lacking the oil reserves of the emirate's neighbors, Dubai's ruling family created a parallel economic reality fueled by real estate, international investment and the art of the possible. The emirate was fashioned into a sleek cityscape of startling images: Islam balanced against the seduction of Western capitalism, and tribal traditions brushing the fleeting trends of globalization.

I just got back from Dubai and everyone asks me to explain what it is like there. I have to say that Christopher Hawthorne's article ("Desert Ripple," June 21) is one of the best descriptions I have read for what I saw while I was there. Karma Collins Detroit

Christopher Hawthorne's interesting and insightful piece on Dubai ("Desert Ripple," June 21) did us a service in separating the forest (the emerging urban form of clusters of unified development) from the trees (the individual buildings). More critical thought is needed to understand this emerging form of urbanism that is so different than is practiced in large U.S. cities. The Dubai experience is sometimes called the new "Middle East urbanism." This urbanism is expressed through large-scale projects, under single sponsorships, occurring all over the world being driven by the need to accommodate the urban growth rates in non-Western countries.

The Dubai model is doomed for failure. The architecture is soulless and like the emperor who wasn't wearing clothes. The freedoms deprived of the denizens (citizens & ex-pats) will result in empty, crumbling corridors within a generation. As a famous historian wrote, a people without roots is akin to planting cut flowers. Dave Mustain via e-mail

Be warned: Spitting here could get you deported. We're not talking just any kind of spit. In this case, it's the red-tinted juice of a popular Asian leaf that's causing the fuss as Dubai tries to buff the image of its less-posh districts. The crackdown -- announced last month amid a broader effort to stem behavior deemed offensive -- has stirred an unusual Arab-Asian culture clash in a city where the friction is often between Western ways grating against conservative Gulf sensibilities.

In the scorching deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, water is always precious, carefully rationed, never wasted. Possessing it separates life from death. What a difference a few miles -- and bucket loads of money -- can make. At Atlantis, the Palm, Dubai's latest and possibly greatest luxury hotel to date, water is an ornament and a plaything. It flows in ridiculous, seemingly endless quantities, simply for the pleasure of it.