Oman's flagbearer Hamed al-Khatri leads his delegation during the opening ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro on August 5, 2016. PEDRO UGARTE / AFP

Spot the well-dressed dude checking in at Hamad International Airport, head wrapped in miles of medical gauze. At Dubai International, a man with a bandaged scalp sips coffee near his gate. Another duo with cotton-dressed domes wait for baggage in Ataturk International. The UAE and Turkey are emerging as medical Meccas for hair transplants . What's behind the buzz? Baldness is more likely in Arab Gulf states than in other parts of the world, so says a report released by The National. "Dubai specialists" quoted in the paper claim that ...

Twitter is never short of controversy. From Donald Trump trolling his political opponents to the Ayatollah Khameini celebrating the capture of US sailors with a meme, opinions of all stripes are welcomed on the social media site. But not all. Twitter has banned countless accounts throughout its existence. Twitter’s criteria for being banned includes “spam,” “account security at risk,” and perhaps most controversially “abusive tweets or behavior.” Most recently, Twitter permanently suspended Milo Yiannopoulos , the conservative provocateur, technology editor at Breitbart and self-described “dangerous faggot,” claiming he partook in ...

Arabic literature stretches over a thousand years and has left very few stones unturned. From the classic tales of A Thousand and One Nights to the modern stories that occupy the shelves of bookstores throughout the Arab World, Arab writers have carved out a name for themselves as being bold and intrepid - sometimes at great personal cost considering the oft-maligned lack of press freedom in the region. However, there is one final frontier that tends to go unexplored by Arab writers: science fiction. The West had its science fiction ...

Jordan's flagbearer Hussein Iashaish leads his delegation during the opening ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro on August 5, 2016. PEDRO UGARTE / AFP

International media often struggles with naming the various actors in the Middle East today. Is it Daesh? ISIS? The Islamic State? ISIL? Is he Benjamin Netanyahu ? Binyamin? Or Bibi? Is it the regime of Bashar al-Assad or the government? And what is the difference? And on top of all this, the media often reports on names of groups without explaining their meaning. Hamas and Fatah are rival Palestinian groups, for example. So do their names reflect their difference in ideology? Al Bawaba is here to help. Take a look ...

Militant factions and international terror groups are typically on the bad side of major global powers. The combined military force and intelligence apparatus of the nations waging war on terrorism and militancy provide a significant threat to groups from Colombia to Yemen, who just as soon as declaring their existence could find themselves on the wrong end of a drone strike. But not all threats are external. Conflicting ideologies, controversial decisions, or differences in strategy can lead to internal strife that can dissolve a group or even lead to a ...

Oh, to be a child once again! Those were the days, especially as an 80s/90s kid in the Middle East, when recess meant one of two things: Playing games with the neighborhood kids down the street, or binge watching the best cartoons the very few TV channels available had to offer (long before SpaceToon and Cartoon Network came to life). Whether it was crying over girls’ faves Sally and Lady Lady (dubbed mostly from their original Japanese into classical Arabic), or laughing at the silliness of everyone’s favorites The Flintstones ...

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL - JULY 31: A journalist poses for a selfie in front of the Olympic rings ahead of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games on July 31, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Christian Petersen/Getty Images/AFP Christian Petersen / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP

Why does Oman have swords on their flag? Why does Qatar have the world’s widest flag? Why would Jordan put a five-sided star on theirs? Here’s a question: Why do so many Arab flags look the same? No disrespect to the proud states of the Maghreb, Mashreq, and Gulf, but if you take a combination of red, green, white, and black then toss in a falcon for good measure you’ve got all the ingredients you need to put together just about any of the region’s flags. You won’t hear anyone ...

The Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games kick off on August 5, its fanfare muddled by unfinished infrastructure, polluted water, violent crime, Russian doping, and the terrifying Zika virus . But ten special athletes are bringing a new, positive meaning to the event. Each is a bona fide refugee, competing for the first time as the nationless Refugee Olympic Team (ROT). Ten people were picked from a pool of 43 promising candidates based on sporting level, official United Nations refugee status , and personal stories. The nationless team will march under ...