Typhoons and iTunes

Cassie Biggs

• Last Updated: November 20. 2009 7:06PM UAE / November 20. 2009 3:06PM GMT

Inscrutable frowns

Barack Obama headed to Asia on his first official trip to the region since being made president of the United States. While Mr Obama tried to curry favour in Japan by declaring himself the “first president of the Pacific” and bowing deeply to the emperor instead of sticking to protocol and shaking hands, it earned him criticism in China and South Korea, his next two stops, where anger runs deep at the war atrocities carried out by the Japanese.

While in China, Mr Obama fell foul of critics back home by taking just five minutes to meet with his half-brother, Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo, and for not pushing the Chinese on their human rights record.

Guantanamo deadline slips

In another break with protocol, Mr Obama candidly admitted to the US TV networks that Washington would miss a January 2010 deadline he had set to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba. Mr Obama did not say when the centre would close, only that it would be “sometime later in the year”. There are still some 215 detainees at the prison, most of whom were held following the invasion of Afghanistan, who cannot be freed or tried in the US.

Family adrift for weeks

Five men from Papua New Guinea survived weeks adrift at sea by eating wood and coconut. Eight members of an extended family were travelling by boat to one of country’s offshore islands when they ran out of fuel. After nearly two months at sea they were rescued by a US navy vessel, but two of the eight men were so malnourished that they died before reaching the shore. A third man, a teenager, died after he jumped overboard to retrieve his clothes and was too weak to swim back to the boat.

Expat police recruits

Abu Dhabi said it would start recruiting non-Emiratis into its community police force. The scheme, to start within a fortnight, will focus first on the English-speaking community and then branch out to look for other foreign language speakers, including those who speak Urdu. Although the community officers do not have the full range of police powers, they will patrol with regular police and help to deal with issues such antisocial behaviour, dangerous driving and crime prevention.

Woman stoned to death

In Somalia, about 200 people watched as a 20-year-old Somali woman was stoned to death for adultery. The woman, recently divorced, had been having a relationship with a 29-year-old single man and had given birth to a stillborn child. The woman, from a small village near the town of Wajid, 400km north-west of the capital, Mogadishu, was taken to the public grounds where she was buried up to her waist and stoned by Islamist fighters of the Al Shababa militant group. Her boyfriend was given 100 lashes.

Oprah’s oops!

The production company for Oprah Winfrey, the hugely popular television talk show host, apologised to the people of Dubai for an episode of her show in which a guest, an Emirati doctor, incorrectly said water and electricity were free in the Emirates.

Dr Lamees Hamdan, an Emirati mother of five and the founder of the Shiffa cosmetics brand, had also said the shela and abaya were worn by women for cultural reasons and not religious ones. This caused a flurry of complaints from people across the country who said Dr Hamdan’s views did not represent the majority of Emiratis.

More GI suicides

A top US general warned that there could be more suicides in the US army this year than ever before. Gen Peter Chiarelli, the army’s vice chief of staff, told a Pentagon briefing that the number of suicides in the army so far this year had already surpassed last year’s total of 140. Another 71 soldiers committed suicide after being taken off active duty in 2009, nearly 25 per cent more than the total for 2008. Some had returned home only weeks before taking their own lives.

The news came as Barack Obama considers a request to send another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan.

Dogfights over Dubai

The Middle East got its first glimpse of the world’s most advanced fighter planes, the American F-22 Raptor and the Eurofighter Typhoon as they roared overhead at the Dubai Air Show. On the ground, though, orders were thin. At the last air show, in 2007, a record US$155 billion (Dh570bn) in purchases were made. This year’s biggest contract, a deal of less than US$3bn between Airbus and Ethiopian Airlines, was first discussed months ago. However, Abu Dhabi said it would spend Dh815m on upgrading is defences by buying two new early warning aircraft. The first will be delivered towards the end of next year and one in 2011 after that.

Hafia’s oops!

The Lebanese singer Hafia Wehbe apologised to Egypt’s Nubian community for any offence she may have caused with the lyrics of her song Where Is Daddy? A group of Egyptian lawyers have filed a complaint against the singer for the song in which she refers to “Nubian monkeys”. Members of Egypt’s black ethnic minority are outraged at what they see as a racial slur and want the song banned. Ms Wehbe said she had no idea of the racial connotations and that the songwriter had told her that the term was a reference to a game played by children.

A quieter Eid?

A three-day music extravaganza to be held over the Eid holiday in Bahrain looked increasingly unlikely to happen as conservative parliamentarians urged the government to ban the event. As well as music with DJs from Bahrain and the Gulf, the event was to feature games on the beach. However, MPs said it was a threat to moral values and that the expected mixing of thousands of young boys and girls was not welcome.

Cover girl complaint

Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and running mate of John McCain, the Republican contender in the 2008 presidential race, protested to Newsweek magazine that its cover photograph of her was sexist. The image showed Mrs Palin in running shorts next to a US flag and was shot for the magazine Runner’s World. It accompanied a story about Mrs Palin’s recently released memoir, Going Rogue. “When it comes to Sarah Palin, this ‘news’ magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant,” Mrs Palin wrote on her Facebook page. “The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now.” Mrs Palin came third in the 1984 Miss Alaska beauty contest.

iTuning in

UAE residents may soon be able to download music from a local version of the iTunes Music Store, instead of having to use an overseas credit card to access content from the UK or US sites. Negotiations taking place between the UAE’s telecommunications watchdog and Apple, Amazon and Sony would also allow residents to buy the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader, the two most popular e-reading devices. The discussions are still in the early stages and focus on protecting the copyright of the digital material. There was no indication of how long the talks could go on for.

* The National