Algeria's Taoufik Makhloufi celebrates winning the silver medal in the Men's 1500m Final during the athletics event at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium in Rio de Janeiro on August 20, 2016. Adrian DENNIS / AFP

Daesh (ISIS), Daesh and Daesh. That’s what Iraq is primarily in the news for nowadays as government and allied militia forces fight to take territory from the Islamic militant group, along with help from the US-led coalition and Iran. Possible independence of Iraqi Kurdistan and protests against the government of Haider al-Abadi make the news too, among other stories. What doesn’t appear in the headlines is what Iraq used to look like before war plagued the country. Enter the Old Iraqi Pictures Twitter account , with its handle @IraqiPic. “Our ...

Tunisia's bronze medallist Marwa Amri reacts on the podium at the end of the women's 58kg freestyle wrestling event at the Carioca Arena 2 in Rio de Janeiro on August 17, 2016, during the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Jack GUEZ / AFP

Jordan's Hussein Iashaish fights France's Tony Victor James Yoka during the Men's Super Heavy (+91kg) Quarterfinal 1 match at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Riocentro - Pavilion 6 in Rio de Janeiro on August 16, 2016. Yuri CORTEZ / AFP

Sports are meant to be a reprieve from reality - a refuge from politics where sportsmanship and competition trump all else . Though much of the time sports can stay separate from world affairs, exceptional events have caused both to intersect frequently as international conflicts spill over into the arenas and stadiums of sporting events. Perhaps no one knows this intersection better than Israeli athletes, who regularly face opposition to their participation in international sports. The worst came in 1972, when members of the Israeli Olympic team was kidnapped and ...

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 ...