The Dubai Police Supercar Collection

Dubai Police BMW (Photo credit: Danny McL)

The papers have been all agog this week with Dubai Police's natty collection of supercars, being shown off at the ATM (Arab Tourism Market) show in Dubai. They've got more coverage than Beiber. Mind you, if it were up to me, I'd give the inside of a ping pong ball more coverage than Beiber, the egregious little brat.

The boys in green have been showing off their Bentley Continental, Lamborghini Aventador, Ferrari FF and an Aston Martin One-77 and many's the gasp their collection has earned 'em - you can see the pics here from The National.

Now while you might cavil and say this is just another example of over-the-top supercar culture in a country where car culture kills too many young people every year, I have to confess I have come around to the view that it's actually a brilliant stunt at a number of levels. Firstly, it's part of the Dubai Ltd message - better, bigger, faster more. We have such luxurious luxury neighbourhoods we have to patrol them in supercars. You might find the brashness sits uneasily with you, but these cars are every schoolboy's dream and they're as much a part of the Brand Dubai proposition as seven star hotels. And I bet you a pound to a penny they get a nice slot on Top Gear to boot - let alone loads of other media coverage and squillions of social media shares as tourists post Twitpicks of that unbelievable cop car they saw in Dubai.

It's also brilliant because it has the potential to recruit those dazzle-eyed schoolkids. If people who drive cars like this are cool then, syllogistically, Dubai Police are cool. And we'd all rather have a cool policeman to look up to rather than some out of touch fuddy-duddy jobsworth with a book of tickets, right? I mean, if some guy tooled up with an Aventador says 'Drive Carefully', you might just listen to the guy. It's like Chuck Norris telling you to eat your greens.

Initially skeptical, I have now taken my hat off...

The Dubai Speeding Festival

Image by Camera Slayer via FlickrDubai Police have finally clarified the traffic fine discount story and confirmed to The National that a 30% discount on all motoring violations will be available for the coming three months to December 11th.

You have to pay all your fines at once and, you'll note from the story 'Police are working with the Ministry of Interior to allow people in other emirates to get their discount when paying Dubai fines' - or, in other words, quite how this will work if you live in Abu Dhabi and want to get your discount.has yet to be quite worked out.

I have to confess to being a tad puzzled by this one. Cars here have to be registered annually, with a road-worthiness test and a registration process that involves you paying all outstanding fines. So if the police are giving a discount to encourage people to pay their outstanding fines, that must surely mean people aren't actually registering their cars (because you can't avoid paying the fines if you do register your car).

But then surely you just look out for people who aren't displaying the up to date registration stickers on their car bumpers and nick 'em if they've got no registration and outstanding fines. Even better, look up people who have registered vehicles and who haven't renewed their registrations and then pay 'em a house visit with a Black Maria in tow.

Anyway, the discount will reduce the 'entry level' traffic fine of Dhs700 to Dhs490, so you might as well make hay while the sun shines and cough up.

If this is successful we could maybe look forward to having an annual event. You could have fireworks and things, even raffle off a Lexus every day. Hell, you could even have a mascot! Speedhesh!

Dope Test Does For Dubai DJ

Image via Wikipedia

Dubai isn't the best place in the world to be a DJ, it would seem. Following from the controversial four years in the chokey handed out to British drum 'n' bass DJ Grooverider, who served ten months of the sentence before a handy Ramadan pardon slipped him a Get Out Of Jail Free card, news breaks today in the papers of a DJ who has been arrested and charged with drugs offences.

Grooverider, or Raymond Bingham to his mum, was carrying just over a gram of hash in a clear plastic bag - very airport security conscious of him - which he says he forgot was there. I can sympathise with that - when Abu Dhabi  police are lifting Afghans with over 15 kilos of smack in fruit crates, you can sort of see that a gram of hash is hardly the road to nailing Mr Big. At least it wasn't a microgram or two stuck in his shoe.

However, Grooverider did have the banned drug on him. This new case sees a man charged for having the drug in him - the DJ, identified as custom would have it as merely "AM", was according to Gulf News and others, the subject of a raid following a tip-off. The papers report that Dubai's anti-narcotics unit searched his car and then his house and found not a jot of naughty stuff. So they gave him a blood test and found THC in his bloodstream. THC is the stuff that makes smoking hash fun (The used engine oil they cut it with is some of the stuff that makes it less fun, but that's another story).

Gulf News reports the man as saying, "I am not guilty. I want a judgment," which is a slightly odd thing to say in a court of law. It's the one thing you can be sure of, really.

His defence is that he smoked while in the UK at Christmas. THC is known to stay in the system for days, possibly weeks after it is consumed - most online references give 30-45 days, although some claim three months. The amount of body fat you're toting has an effect here, as THC likes to snuggle up to fat and stay there. There is also the question of the sensitivity and type of the test - the most common test is a urine test, but hair can also be tested for THC and it's in there until the hair grows out. The 'half life' of THC is an interesting fact for many because an increasing number of companies (particularly US corporates) insist on being given the contractual right to carry out random drug testing among staff.

Wherever this case goes, you can guarantee it's going to go in the UK press, where it's not going to play terribly well, I suspect. The message has always been utterly clear here - don't do drugs and if you do we'll be tough on you.

Buttons

Image by saraab™ via Flickr

Sometimes you find a story in Gulf News that goes beyond the ordinary, that is in a class all of its own. They usually originate from Ras Al Khaimah and involve herds of suicidal sheep, ghosts in caves or escaped deadly predators that some lunatic has been keeping as pets.

My treat today was the news that a shopkeeper in Ajman has been arrested for selling fake Dubai police uniform buttons. It's obviously no treat for the shopkeeper, who'll currently be in nick somewhere while they work out what to chuck at him charge-wise ("Let's do him under the 1986 official gold buttons forgery act!"), but the story itself has many touches of manic genius. It's here in all its glory.

Dubai police are not at all happy at the shop flogging copies of their buttons, as said buttons are specially made for them by a company in Italy. In fact, the danger of such buttonfoolery are pointed out to GN by a forensic expert and criminologist with Dubai police, who tells the newspaper, "These buttons could be used by suspects impersonating a police officer."

"I'm a policeman. Give me all your money."
"Show us yer buttons!"
"Here."
"Okay, you're legit. Will you take a cheque?"


The criminologist uses his keen understanding of the recidivist's mindset to conjecture that Dubai's Boys in Green might have been buying the buttons from the shop owner whose establishment is suspected, GN tells us, of being a tailor's shop, in order to repair their uniforms on the quiet. Apparently any policeman found ruining his uniform or losing his military costume accessories could face a military fine or trial.


So rather than face the consequences of their actions, they've been sneaking up to Ajman and getting black market buttons sewn on? Surely not - not policemen! There has to be some other explanation.

Won't it be wonderful if the shop owner had the presence of mind to keep a customer list? This could do for Gulf News what the parliamentary expenses scandal did for The Telegraph.

ButtonGate! We await the next installment of this one with bated breath...

UAE Sets Up Cyber Crimes Unit. Uh Oh.

Image via Wikipedia

The UAE government is to set up a new department to combat cyber crimes such as financial scams, hacking, fraud, fake companies , extortion and pornography, according to today's sizzling Gulf News.

This is a good thing. The new department will be recognised by the Federal Courts and likely will be set up in Sharjah and, says GN, will be charged with drafting laws and regulations for the online world, as well as with the job of co-ordinating with law enforcement bodies. This is also, potentially, a good thing. The UAE's judiciary does not the benefit of a legal framework that recognises the online world and currently could fairly be said to rely heavily on court appointed experts when it comes to cases that have online aspects to them.

Quoted in a call-out box in GN's story that discusses 'e-police patrols', however, a major in the Abu Dhabi police says, "When there is a malicious rumour doing its rounds, or when there is a major security issue, the police can perform undercover operations online, just as in reality."

Now, when there is a 'malicious rumour' in print, its a matter for the National Media Council to regulate and is governed by media law - as far as I know, the police aren't patrolling Gulf News.

Can we consider a 'malicious rumour' online to be a different kettle of fish , then? There's certainly a grey area here - is online commentary to be regulated as media or public order?

UAE Facebook Libel Case Heard

Image by Fati.m.a Maria via Flickr

It was inevitable that we'd see such a case one day. Dubai's Misdemeanours Court yesterday heard the case of a Syrian who had posted photographs tagged with 'libellous comments' on his FaceBook page, according to Gulf News today.

The National, incidentally, didn't seem to get the story - there's a pattern emerging here where GN is stronger on the Dubai-led official stuff and The National on the Abu Dhabi/Federal beat.

No judgement has yet been passed in the case, although the defendent did say, according to GN, "I'm guilty and I did defame him because he provoked me." This could well avoid any wrinkles in the case that would test the ability of the judiciary to sit in judgement of complex cases involving online behaviours and technologies - I hope it doesn't stop the judge from exploring the legal issues the case opens up.

However, the critically important precedent in this is that the case was brought to court at all. In fact, Dubai Police's E-Crime section received a complaint from the allegedly defamed party and presumably brought the case.

The judge's summing up on this one has the potential to be important for many of us - we have already seen both cases and judgements in the UK and US that start to set precedents for how online media are being treated with regard to issues such as anonymity (the British High Court, for instance, judging that blogging is 'an activity carried out in public' and therefore a blogger does not have a right to have his or her anonymity preserved or protected) and online libel (we have now seen cases involving FaceBook, MySpace and Twitter).

The GN story is worth a read, BTW - the 'libel' that GN reports seems pretty mild as they go and appears to refer to a dispute that is itself ongoing in Dubai courts between the plaintiffs, according to the defendant and so wouldn't necessarily appear to be as clear-cut as the defendant's 'mea culpa' statement seems to make it.

Deoxyribonucleic Acid

Image via Wikipedia

I have to confess, when I first saw the news that a group of police and forensics experts will meet today in Sharjah to discuss setting up a UAE national DNA database, my first reaction was of irritation. We've just been through the laborious process of having our finger, thumb and palm prints, our photographs and our other identity details taken, so if you wanted my DNA you could have had it then.

If you consider the disastrous roll-out of the national ID card system, one can only shudder at the potential in this new move. Commented on at length by many a blogger and even held out to dry by the dailies eventually, the conflicting announcements, lack of preparedness and ill-assembled systems deployed to manage the ID card process resulted in protracted, and comic, confusion on a huge scale. Imagine a repeat performance only accompanied by men in lab coats swabbing our cheeks and pecking little hunks of us off to be labelled and then mixed up.

But my irration passed as I read the story (once again, it was The National wot had the skinny) and saw what I can only describe as eminently sensible comments from the Chairman of the Emirates DNA Working Group, Dr. Ahmed Marzooki. He talked to The National about a possible 10-year programme, with initiatives to set up a legal framework to deal with issues of individual privacy and also to look at facilities, procedures, staffing and the like.

Marzooki also pointed out that the imperative to collect the data wasn't just criminal investigation (although that surely must be the most important driver) but also to be able to identify people in cases such as natural disaster and other tragedies - in fact, just back in August, a process was started by Dubai police to try and identify the relatives of eleven men who were killed in a fire villa in Dubai's Naif area. Storing the remains, contacting relatives, taking samples and shipping them must be a laborious and immensely expensive process - the database would mean an end to that type of investigation and speed positive identification for families and friends.

So I came away impressed with this clear evidence of quality of thought and with the feeling that if Marzooki, the man who is Interpol's only Middle Eastern representative, is at the front of this one, we may just see the lessons of the ID card roll-out learned.

We may even see the data integrated with the ID card biometric data, albeit with access controls in place. We may...

Radar Speed Traps. Fail.

Image by hugovk via Flickr

The UK is the radar camera capital of Europe with 4,309 speed traps in the country by 2007 – up from 1,571 in 2001. There are over 430 speed traps in London alone. By comparison, Germany has some 3,000 cameras and France has under 1,000.

UK media report that despite the massive rise in fixed radars, the decline in road deaths in the UK has been slower than in other European countries, with the government conceding that speeding is a contributory factor in only 6% of road accidents and a causatory factor in some 13% of fatal crashes.

At the same time, papers like the Daily Mail (recommended reading for people who lean to the extreme right of politics, by the way) report that speeding fines are generating over $200 million per annum.

The UK’s Institute of Advanced Motorists believes that there is too much dependence on radars in road safety – ‘Speed cameras are not the be-all-and-end-all of road safety’, their spokesperson told the Mail.

It’ll be interesting to see where that leaves motorists in Dubai and Sharjah, where the proliferation of both fixed and mobile radar cameras has reached epic proportions. I rather suspect that we’re going to see the innovation eulogised by those responsible for it in a blitz of publicity based on non-independently derived statistics – but that would fly in the face of the clear statistics from Europe which clearly tell us that revenue-generating though they may be, radars are not the solution to road safety.

TV

Today’s Gulf News is an unexpectedly racy read. Not only are Dubai Police warning transvestites, with top cop and sometime poet Dahi Khalfan Tamim pondering the fact that mixed education is to blame for the rise in transvestism in the UAE, but there’s been an outbreak of lesbianism, too! Two women have apparently been jailed for a month each for ‘cuddling and kissing and behaving like a married couple’ on a public beach, according to the multi-kilo wodge of daily paper. One can only assume that they had a row because one of them had forgotten the sun-tan lotion.

But it’s the transvestites story that has that lovely touch of pottiness to it. There’s something quite delicious about a five-day crackdown on cross-dressers: “transvestites have been seen of late in public places, including shopping malls” we are told. I can't wait for it: ladies with suspiciously large hands and adams apples had better watch out, no?

It’s all rather reminiscent of early 1960s Britain, to be honest – the ebb and flow of a society struggling to preserve its values in the face of the pressures of the modern age. Touches like blaming a rise in transvestism on mixed education really give it that whiff of Ealing comedy, though.

A sort of Middle Eastern version of Passport to Pimlico is what’s needed, methinks...

A footnote: I wonder if Scottish people in Dubai dare wear their kilts over the coming week? Now that arrest would make a marvellous news story...

Rotters

I've moaned about the radar rotters on the Academic City road before. They're a real pest: an unfair speed limit of 80kph on a two-lane stretch of unencumbered blacktop means it's littered with cops and their radar cameras. It used to be just the one of them, but now there are several and they're almost always there - it's got to the point where traffic slows down near anything stopped on the hard shoulder.

You could argue that we should all be observing the speed limit, but it's such a silly speed limit - it's actually hard to drive through a desert highway at under 100kph. And I found out why today. A five-year study by the American Federal Highways Authority "found that the 85th percentile speed-or the speed under which 85 percent of drivers travel-changed no more than 1 to 2 mph even when the speed limit changed 15 mph." In other words, the average driver calculates the safe speed of a road and drives at that speed, almost irrespective of the speed limit. So an unnaturally low limit (the Academic City road, for instance) results in making otherwise safe and responsible drivers technical violators.

This, of course, doesn't concern the radar rotters - they're making loadsamoney! These cameras can notch up some serious money, babba! And watch out for the new fines - they can get really high - particularly when you're catching people doing 120kph in an 80 limit because they're driving down an open desert road with nothing but sand dunes all around them. That's Dhs500 a time!

Which must explain why I am exposed to wide-pattern squidges of radar anything up to ten times on my way to work every day - and never less than five. That's up to twenty exposures to a 200m spread beam of radar every working day. There's no proof this is bad for you. But there's no proof it's good for you, either.

And there is a great deal of evidence that radars aren't the solution to bad driving, that accident figures don't reduce with the use of radar and that, in fact, radars can contribute to higher rates of certain types of accident.

And no, just in case you're wondering, he didn't catch me. I slowed down in time.

Fake

I get quite a lot of searches that end up here because someone looked for fake stuff. Fake chicken is one such example. There are a number of others, some quite worrying. Fake Plastic Women, for instance. Well, here's a post that is definitely 100% fake focused!

Pal Carrington just got an email from a gentleman calling himself Jamal Jumeirah. It's the Nigerian Fake Letter Scam, only in Dubai form:

Dear Friend,

It is indeed my pleasure to write to you this letter, which I believe will be a suprise, as we are both complete strangers.

As you read this, I don't want you to feel sorry for me, because I believe everyone will die someday. My name is Jamal Jumeirah, a former merchant in Dubai, in the U.A.E. I have been diagnosed with Esophageal cancer which was discovered very late, due to my laxity in caring for my health.

It goes on at great length - the payoff being the usual deposit money in bank account 5% could be yours kind of thing.

It's not terribly creative, which is a shame. There are so many more interesting ways that Jamal Jumeirah could make you rich... or take everything you've got to give...

Road Runner and the Radar Rotters

One of the things that’s kept me so long in the UAE is the fact that it’s such a very paradoxical place: there’s never one simple answer or one simple fact, a single explanation or a unitary truth. Even better, the variety of complexities are usually deliciously oppositional.

For instance, we enjoy one of the world’s lowest crime rates and live in one of the safest environments the globe has to offer. And at the same time the number of deaths on our roads is remarkably high – traffic accidents are an everyday commonplace, so much so that, with humanity’s remarkable penchant for adaptability, we tend to accept driving past the blood-chilling wreckage of interlocked cars as a mere fact of life. Many actually slow down for a good old peek, an Eastern morbid fascination that irritates those from the West, who fidget and moan at the delays caused by the rubberneckers.

The response to a number of high profile road tragedies and the consequent growing howl of outrage from media and public was to introduce a huge number of new speed cameras. I don’t know how much radar the human body can cope with, but many of us are now being multiply irradiated daily (as well as being RFIDed by the glorious Salik system!) as the vast network of fixed and mobile radars grows. They’re springing up everywhere, particularly the mobile ones.

And the mobile ones are most fun.

It’s like Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner out there, it really is. They set them up behind bushes, traffic signs, concrete blocks, dustbins or any other roadside impediment they can find. They park up on the roadside with the radar gun and flash unit in front of the bonnet, set up by the tailgate or snuck into the back of an estate car. There’s even one unit that’s a van with a circular and rectangular window cut into the back to accommodate the hardware. All it needs is a sign on the side saying 'ACME Radar Unit'...

They set up the cameras and park their, usually relatively distinctive (in the Khawaneej area you’ll find a silver estate and a sea-green metallic hatchback are the cars of choice) motors around the corner so you don’t spot ‘em. One of them has the delightful habit of parking his car on the hard shoulder and putting the camera 200 meters or so back up the road from it so that the radar catches you before you slow down in case the car is a radar unit. This is only averagely sneaky – there’s one bozo in Sharjah who likes to set up his mobile camera a hundred metres or so after one of the fixed cameras, so they get you as you speed up past the fixed one. Like I said, it’s Road Runner style stuff!

But the one that really fires me up is the joker who sets up on my way to work: the Academic City road between Khawaneej and the Al Ain road. This four-lane stretch of gently curving asphalt runs through 100% desert: there’s not a house, factory or other building on it. If ever there was a road that should carry a 120kph limit (the UAE maximum), this was it. And the limit, insanely, is 80. It’s almost impossible to drive that stretch of long desert road at 80kph. You’d go mad. They’d find you naked and running, gibbering, through the ghaf trees.

So it’s rich pickings for our evilly giggling little friend. Convention dictates that radar cameras in the UAE trigger at 20kph above the limit. So you do 101kph down the Academic City road and he’s nailed you with a Dhs200 fine.

But wickedness can bring out the best in people. UAE nationals, expats, Europeans, Indians, Pakistani truck drivers and all – I’ve watched as drivers warn others about the hidden camera, flashing hazard lights, brake lights or even putting arms out to flag down those jazzing it up in the fast lane. I have thanked and been thanked in my turn by others as people from around the world are brought together, for a few brief and human seconds, by the collective desire to save our fellow men from the predatory and unfair practices of the Radar Rotter.

Russian Girl's Dubai Face Slash Attack

You'd have thought that, coming back to Lalaland from Europe, you'd have the right to expect the usual slew of daft 'good times' news from the dailies but I was shocked to catch Gulf News' story on Alla Khrapovitskaya, the 20 year old student who was attacked in Dhiyafa, near to where our bijou offices are.

Returning home from university one evening late in May, she was slashed repeatedly in the face by an unknown attacker using 'a large knife'. She remembers little about the incident, says GN, bar that it was unprovoked and her assailant took nothing from her and didn't try to touch her sexually.

The slash across her face cuts through her left cheek and then, the other side of her mouth, her right cheek. Another cuts down across her mouth from her left cheek while the right side of her face bears a downward slash from her eyebrow to her lower cheek. In all, she has seven such slashes carved into her face. The scarring she has been left with is horrific.

Her mother wants her to have reconstructive surgery: she told GN she was willing to sell her kidney to pay to restore her daughter's face. I did find it strange that someone would immediately think of that as a way to raise money.

But two things really struck me hard about this story. The first was that I cannot recall any previous story - did it really take a month to get this out there? And the second thing was that the GN report doesn't address the one angle that is surely of the greatest public concern. Despite a natural sympathy for the poor girl, it's the fact that the police are at a total loss: the attacker left 'no clues' apparently.

Which means that whoever did this is still free and wandering around Dubai's lively Satwa residential area at night. The thought is unsettling, to say the least.

NOT The Salik FAQ - Questions About The Dubai Road Toll Dodged Elegantly

Obviously based on a huge amount of entirely unhelpful speculation, here’s the FAQ that answers the questions that the official FAQ doesn’t answer!

What happens if I sell my car?

You have to peel the tag off your windscreen, which damages the tag, so you have to buy a new tag. It might leave some bits of plastic and gucky adhesive on the windscreen, but we can’t be sure yet because we haven’t left a tag stuck to a window in the 55C sun for three months yet. Let alone tried doing that for a couple of years. But we’re sure it’ll be OK. Anyway, why should you care? It’s not your car anymore, is it?

Yes, it’s a Dhs50 car sale tax. Well, Dhs 100 really, ‘cos the bloke that’s buying your car has to get a new tag, too.

Do Salik tags go brown and brittle after a couple of years in the sun like everything else around here (including the people)?

No. Yes. We’re not sure. But they’ll still work, so what’s your problem?

Will they? Really? Work?

Yes.

Sure?

Yyyyyes. Almost. But if they don’t we’ll sort that out.

How?

We just will, alright?

What happens to any available balance on my Salik tag when I sell my car?

Good question. You should really get it refunded, shouldn’t you? The money would logically be held against your Salik account rather than the physical tag. You should call the Salik centre to ‘deactivate the tag’ before you sell your car, according to the official FAQ, but there’s nothing about transferring the balance or anything like that. Interesting one. We’re sure it’ll be sorted out for the best. Really. Trust us.

What happens if a chance stone hits my windscreen and the tag is damanged?

You’re being for real here? Right. You buy a new windscreen and a new tag. Da. Are you asking if that tag can be added to your account or if you just add a new tag to your account? Well, that depends. We’ll basically make up the rules for that one as it happens. OK?

What happens if I don’t have a tag at all?

You mean how are we going to catch you? Not sure. Guess we’ll have to wait and see. Alexander’s money is on a photo-based system, which is going to leave someone combing through an awful lot of number plate photos.

If I drive through the Salik tollgate backwards, do I get a refund?

Nice idea, but I rather doubt it will work, don’t you?

More anon... >:)

For Whom The Toll Bills

So Dubai's Roads & Transport Authority is introducing the much-awaited and suspiciously regarded Salik toll system next month. The system is based on RFID technology and will charge 4Dhs (a tad over a dollar) each time you cross the popular Garhoud Bridge or pass Mall of the Emirates on the Sheikh Zayed Road. Your Salik tag is stuck to the windscreen and automatically deducted when you pass the charge point and can be recharged by credit card, at ATMs, over the Web and so on. The application form's finally available online, by the way!

All pretty advanced stuff. And by no means a bad thing if it reduces congestion and accidents - although according to media reports, Dubai Police have reservations about the system and its implementation.

It took a wife to pose, with the irrefutable power of female logic, the question I hadn't thought of at all: "How will you know what your balance is?"

How indeed. If you let your tag run out and pass a charge point, it'll cost you Dhs50 - so you really don't want to let that tag lag. The good news is that you get an SMS when your account's running low, according to the RTA, and you can also query your balance with an SMS. And if you recharge within 48 hours of the offence, you'll get let off.

All of which is reassuring. But there's a lot of technology going on in there, from the RFID scanners to the core IT system to the financial management software to the SMS gateway that will manage tens of thousands of messages a day. Add in a couple of million of those messy, organic carbon-based life forms that appear to exist purely to get around, muck about with or otherwise frustrate grand schemes like this and I think that we might all be in for some fun here.

Summer surprises indeed!!!

Poetic Justice

At the press conference convened yesterday to announce the capture of the Wafi City Heist Gang, Dubai police chief Dhahi Khalfan Tamim may have surprised some observers by breaking out into poetry. Quite rightly celebrating the force's considerable achievement in bringing the gang to book in record time, he once again brings a splash of colour to an event which would have been a drabber affair without his presence.

Today, his poetic words are being carried widely by the Arabic language radio stations and now, exclusively, I can share them with you in English too.

Shortat Dubai takbod 3ala el 3isaba

Wa to3eed el almas las7aba

Wa fee kabdatoha al mojrimeen wal mal li arbaba

(The above is in 'MSN Arabic' - 3 is pronounced a'a and 7 is ha)

In English:

Dubai Police caught the gang
And returned the diamonds to their owner
And the money will go back to the proprietor

Which is nice, isn't it?