Jordan may rank 60 places beneath Uruguay in the FIFA world rankings , but today will see 11 brave Nashama players take on their 11 celestial counterparts on a level playing field. The two teams are due to come head to head in Amman today as they battle it out in this charged play-off for a place in the World Cup. Will Jordan buckle under the pressure of the hopes of a nation as well as a region, or will these plucky underdogs (survivors of the Arab Spring fever) show ...

Lights. Camera. Falafel. You might not have the budget to travel to the places where Hollywood’s greatest movie stars vacation. But you certainly have the budget to schlep it to the places where they work. And be it Star Wars , The Bourne Ultimatum or The English Patient , some of Hollywood’s best talent has come to the Middle East to make their movies . Most recently, U.S. comedian Jon Stewart came to Amman to direct his first film Rosewater . The makers of Sex and the City 2 initially ...

Walking the red carpet is one opportunity every starlet likes to capitalize on - relishing that magical moment to strut her God-given and stylist-served stuff, on the heels of intense preparation to assemble that perfect, fully-accessorized get up for the glitzy event. This year’s 7th edition of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival (24 Oct - 2 Nov) rolled out another hotly anticipated red carpet. Calendars were set and stylists were called in for the pre-festival fashion fanfare. Well it seems some of our celebs, old and young, skipped the fashion ...

Having been called before a Cairo court for inciting murder against protesters in December 2012, former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi joined the delusional ex-presidents club on Monday after calling the court case against him “illegitimate” and refusing to partake in the judicial proceedings as incumbent “president” of Egypt. Morsi’s stand against the Cairo court went as far as him refusing to don his prison uniform. We never realised he had such a penchant for fashion… Even though thousands of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood supporters took to the streets outside the courthouse ...

On November 4, Egypt’s former president Mohamed Morsi is set to go on trial for inciting violence against protesters during an uprising in 2012, six months after he came to power -- and six months before he was removed from his presidency by the army. The Foreign Ministry said that Morsi will be brought to trial for criminal -- not political -- charges. The charges levelled against the ousted Islamist president include “ deliberate and premeditated murder” as well as inciting the “use of violence, thuggery, coercion, possession of firearms ...

So you, like every other strategic career planner, want to be become an expert on the Middle East? You’ve exhausted your net-learning -- Wikipedia is just not giving you that idiosyncratic edge you need to master the ME and conquer the hotbed of the world’s news diet. Have you considered turning back the pages of time to explore books? 2013 it may be, but sometimes you can come a cropper on the internet with all its red herrings and garden path treacherous tangents-- there’s no telling how far afield you ...

Halloween in the Middle East should really be a non-event. With Islam being the religious choice of all Arab countries, (not forgetting the minorities that co-exist within this official narrative), Halloween’s pagan palaver should, in theory, be rejected by Muslims. And for the most part it is -- although there are parties and events riding high on the Halloween trend train, this spooky holiday (so loved by the US and all its copycat following) just doesn’t have the same traction in the Arab world it does elsewhere. Arabs don’t need ...

Beauty in the eye of the beholder or beauty-seeker can be achieved in many ways. But for our grandparents or tradition-keeping folk, the recipe for prettier hair or smoother skin often resulted from methods that today's generation may find a bit bizarre or downright gross, to say the least. While most day to day beauty efforts go on without the overt use of live animals, these old wives tales take us back to a time before L'Oreal (when Nivea had the monopoly!) and when products derived from your caravanning camel ...

Israelis call him the "messiah" for the rich and have accused him of "betting against" US President Barack Obama in the 2012 elections by funnelling money into Mitt Romney’s campaign, via a billionaire buddy and business magnate Sheldon Adelson . He "amazed" the UN assembly with his bomb-inspired "artwork" (or cartoon-work) and left Bill Clinton cursing. He had toed the hardline in Israeli politics so fervently that Madeline Albright called him a Jewish Newt Gingrich (and it wasn't a compliment!). After seventeen years on the Israeli political scene, right wing ...

Every year, before the new season of Arabs Got Talent hijacks our screens and takes over our lives again, we think: “How can the acts get any wackier than the year before?” Judging by Season 3, the bar for wacky is always being raised! And we say, hell, the wackier the better! It’s all about entertainment and lol-ing at the delusional acts taking on the AGT stage, after all. #awkward! Now that we are deep into Season 3 mode, we’ve discovered the answer! Full disclosure? We don’t really mind all ...

A very famous man once memorably said, “ We didn’t start the fire .”. Maybe it was Billy Joel. Or maybe it was Ayatollah Khomeini, when asked about the relations between his country and America. However, to quote the words of another famous man, “the times, they are a-changing.” Iran has just come off a round of meetings with the European Union chaired P5 + 1 Group, which is comprised of the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany. The meetings mark the latest in a series of diplomatic ...