United Arab Emirates

If the Russian metal magnate Mikhail Prokhorov's bid for 80% of the New Jersey Nets seems landmark for its foreignness, just gaze at the motherland. In a United Kingdom whose churning internationalism can make the United States seem cloistered by contrast, foreign ownership of the 20 soccer clubs in the globally towering English Premier League has reached quite a juncture: half. "I'm almost losing track," said Michael Brunskill of the watchdog group Football Supporters' Federation.

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.

A U.S. citizen and former Hawthorne resident was released from a United Arab Emirates jail after being held for more than a year. Naji Hamdan was convicted of terrorism-related charges on Oct. 12, and sentenced to 18 months in jail. His family and the American Civil Liberties Union alleged that his purported confession was gained by torture. Hamdan's sentence was commuted to time served, said Ahilan Arulanantham, director of immigrants rights and national security at the ACLU of Southern California.

A Santa Monica architect known for his high-rise designs is working on what may be the ultimate "spec" building -- a 224-story skyscraper with green ambitions that would be the tallest structure in the world. The tower is envisioned for a man-made island in Abu Dhabi, if leaders of the oil-rich emirate decide they want to make a statement to rest of the world and perhaps one-up neighboring Dubai. A conceptual design for the $3.5-billion project in the United Arab Emirates is under consideration by an Abu Dhabi planning committee, said Tommy Landau, the architect who created the design and is part of an unusual team of U.S. real estate players trying to get the ambitious project launched.

The United Arab Emirates this month seized a cargo ship bound for Iran with a cache of banned arms from North Korea, the first such seizure since sanctions against North Korea were ramped up, diplomats and officials said Friday. The seizure was carried out in accordance with tough new U.N. Security Council sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear weapons program. Diplomats identified the ship as a Bahamian-flagged cargo vessel, the ANL Australia, and said it was carrying rocket-propelled grenades and other arms.

Should the United States sell advanced civilian nuclear reactors to a Middle East country that doesn't seem to need them? A country that can keep pumping oil for the next 100 years, that has a pipeline to a vast natural gas field next door and enough desert for a solar panel array of biblical proportions? No, it's not Iran. It's the United Arab Emirates, that federation of seven states, proposing the efficient and safest nuclear-generating program money can buy.

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.