Warner Bros. To Open Theme Park & Cinemas In Abu Dhabi

What’s up doc? Quite a bit in Abu Dhabi after a developer yesterday signed a multi-billion-dirham deal to bring the creative energy of Warner Bros Entertainment to the emirate.

A joint venture was created between Aldar and the newly-established Abu Dhabi Media Company and the studio that brought us the Harry Potter and Scooby-Doo films and Bugs Bunny.

The massive entertainment project will include a theme park, a luxury hotel and multiplex cinemas on Yas Island, the formation of a joint fund to finance feature films and develop and produce video games, as well as the growth of new media in the emirate.

And that’s not all, folks… New Warner Bros branded cinemas will also be built in Abu Dhabi’s under-construction Central Market, Ruwais in the Western Region and Al Ain.

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This blog has a lot of GONU CYCLONE MEDIA

The blogger has put in a great deal of effort - a lot of pictures and youtube videos.
Some of the pics are posted in Flickr, which are obviously blocked... URL HERE

Africa Day in Abu Dhabi

On June 18, starting at 7:30pm, the African Embassies in the UAE come together for Africa Day, celebrating all things Africa. More information at www.crdsom.org.

CYCLONE GONU

U.A.E. May Be Next to End Dollar Peg, Forwards Show

U.A.E. May Be Next to End Dollar Peg, Forwards Show
By Matthew Brown

June 5 (Bloomberg) -- The United Arab Emirates may be the next Middle Eastern country to stop pegging its exchange rate to the U.S. dollar, according to trading in currency forwards.

The second-largest Arab economy may follow Syria and Kuwait, which both said in the past two weeks that they would dump the dollar peg to curb rising import costs and inflation. Middle East currencies have been dragged lower by declines in the dollar, pushing up the cost of imports from Europe and Asia.

Burj Construction Update

Rem Koolhaas's Dubai Deathstar

We show a lot of proposals for buildings in Dubai, often draped in photovoltaics and covered in propellers, or twisting and turning, it is a Disneyland of architecture. Sometimes we think they are going a bit overboard, as they evolve from Disney to Lucas with buildings like OMA's Ras al Khaimah Convention and Exhibition Centre. We have used Picasso's bon mot, updated by Le Corbusier before: "Good architects borrow but great architects steal" but never was the homage so obvious. Architectspeak below the fold....

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Maktoum launches largest education foundation with $10b endowment

His Highness, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai, today launched the 'Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation', a major initiative to promote human development and provide hope and opportunity by investing in education and knowledge-development in the region. His Highness, Sheikh Mohammed, made the announcement in a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum for the Middle East being held in Jordan.

[Dubai] The Lighthouse: An Innovative Green Skyscraper

The Lighthouse is another innovative green skyscraper to be constructed in Dubai. For energy generation, it will have three enormous 225 kilowatt wind turbines (29 meters in diameter), and 4000 photovoltaic panels on the south facing façade. To optimize performance and operational periods, the turbines have windward directional wind vanes or limited yaw.

The Skyscraper That Creates All Its Own Energy

"This skyscraper, to be built in Dubai, is called the Burj al-Taqa ('Energy Tower'), and it will produce 100% of its own power. The tower will have a huge (197 foot diameter) wind turbine on its roof, and arrays of solar cells that will total 161,459 square feet in size." more here

The Wheels On The Bus Go Round and Round...

I decided to catch a bus the other day. In Dubai that's a strange concept. Firstly white people are rarely seen standing at the bus stop and secondly, as a woman there are only four seats available to you. Confused? So am I.

You go to the bus stop and wait with all the other people. The bus pulls up and you go to get on and there are eight women sitting in the first four seats. These seats are designated for women only. How nice and polite I thought...how cavalier...how old fashioned...how weird.

However the bus was full and those seats were already occupied by other women so I kept walking down the aisle in the aim of standing up and holding on. People started looking at me and then a women yelled out to me that I had to get off the bus because it was full. I looked around and to my untrained eye the bus still had plenty of standing room. I followed this woman and got off the bus, blushing, because I felt I'd committed some sort of crime.

The kind lady explained to me that women are only allowed to sit in the first four rows and are not allowed to stand on the bus. So when the four seats are full, bad luck, you have to wait for another bus. Even if it's 45 degrees outside.

I looked around me, there were at least 15 women waiting. I stood there feeling like an idiot, then did what every Euro expat here does - hailed a taxi.