"The good times are over," a Doha-based diplomat told me glumly last week, as if foretelling the political earthquake about to hit Qatar. On March 5, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain announced in a joint statement that they were withdrawing their ambassadors from Doha -- a move that escalates their long-running feud with the tiny, gas-rich emirate to its most fraught point in recent memory.

n January 2014, I was released from a maximum-security prison in the middle of a desert in the United Arab Emirates. I had been imprisoned for nine months, all but two weeks without a conviction. The reason? UAE authorities accused me of threatening the country's national security by creating a sketch-comedy video parodying teenagers in Dubai and posting it on YouTube.

As the year comes to an end, it is only natural to ask what might lie ahead. But, instead of asking what may lie ahead in 2014, let us jump to mid-century. What will governance look like in 2050? That is what the World Economic Forum (WEF) asked at a recent meeting in Abu Dhabi that focused on the future of governance under three potential scenarios arising from the ongoing information revolution. With that revolution already marginalizing some countries and communities – and creating new opportunities for others – the question could hardly be more timely.

From massive Christmas trees, to man-made ice rinks and fake snow, Dubai is proving once again that it can pull off festive season celebrations in style despite its desert location. While the city cannot boast the world’s tallest Christmas tree, there are quite a few other jaw-dropping attractions to talk about this festive season.

A court in the United Arab Emirates sentenced eight people including an American to up to a year in prison Monday after being convicted in connection to a satirical video about youth culture in Dubai. The video they produced and uploaded to the Internet was a spoof documentary of would-be "gangsta" youth in the Gulf Arab city-state.

Four cities are currently in the running to host the 2020 World Expo: Dubai, UAE; Ekaterinburg, Russia; Izmir, Turkey; and Sao Paulo, Brazil. On November 27, the Bureau International des Expositions will have a meeting of its general assembly to determine the winner. Each city came up with their own proposed theme and objectives for the Expo; read on to find out more.

The United Arab Emirates isn't a country you'd typically associate with hip-hop. It's a place that is generally bereft of the cultural signifiers native to the dark, dank locales where rap was birthed—Illmatic, for instance, probably wouldn't have been the same album if it was about the struggle of going $40 million over budget on your new artificial archipelago instead of the fight out of inner-city poverty.

Sepp Blatter has admitted he is open to the possibility of staging the 2022 World Cup in more than one Gulf nation after revealing several countries had offered to co-host the tournament with Qatar. With a formal decision still to be made over whether it will be staged in the winter, Blatter also indicated that his preference is to start it in November or December rather than January or February.