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Some days ago Gulf News came with an extensive supplement on Sweden.

For the first time ever, the same country has won the Olympic gold and World Championship in Hockey in the same year - Sweden:

Sweden shut out defending champion Czech Republic 4-0 Sunday to win hockey’s world championship, becoming the first country to win that title and Olympic gold in the same year.

It was the eighth world title for Sweden, which had eight Olympic champions on its roster. In the Winter Olympics, Sweden beat Finland in the final.

No team had managed the elusive double in international hockey. There have been six previous times when the Olympics and world championships were played as separate tournaments in the same year.

Sure it’s not Sweden but it’s our neighbour. From Gulf News:

Hundreds of members of the Norwegian community in Dubai celebrated their annual National Day.

Over 300 expatriate Norwegians proudly bearing their national flag convened at the Norwegian Seamen’s Centre in Oud Metha yesterday.

Celebrations began with a reenactment of the traditional schoolchildren’s procession followed by traditional songs performed by children, the symbols of a peaceful tomorrow, from the Norwegian School and an address by Hugo Fjeld, Consul of Norway.

“May 17 marks Norway’s most significant celebration, especially for children, as they are the ones who will inherit our constitution and will maintain the peace,” said Fjeld.

The date marks the day in 1814 when the constitution was adopted, peacefully bringing about an end to the union with Denmark.

Only little problem for them was that after the union with Denmark ended in 1814, Sweden annexed Norway and it was not until 1905 that Norway got their full independence.

GulfNews:

Dubai Properties, a Dubai Holding unit, announced yesterday its Culture Village will offer “an elite lifestyle in an intellectually stimulating environment,” with year-round cultural events.

Culture Village will be located along the Dubai Creek next to Garhoud Bridge on a 40 million square foot plot.

The launch of Culture Village answers the need for culture and art to flourish in parallel, Dubai Properties CEO Hashim Al Dabal said. Culture Village will be a tourist landmark that will attract culture and art lovers from all over the world. The project will add diversity to the cultural and art scene in the UAE and the region,” he said.

The project’s various components will cost about Dh50 billion to build.

Culture Village will feature wide open spaces, traditional wind towers, cobble stone walkways, waterways topped with bridges, creekside souks and eating joints. It will have an amphitheatre for live performances and cultural festivals, an exhibition hall, museums, and a dockyard where traditional dhow building will be on display.

The masterplan has been divided into residential, commercial and retail zones with hospitality and entertainment sub-districts. The residential district will feature traditional low to medium-rise buildings offering studio, one, two, three, and four-bedroom apartments with contemporary interiors, including loft-style apartments with work areas.

CNN:

An 18-year-old woman was stabbed to death in a middle school parking lot as students were arriving for class Thursday, and a man was arrested, police said.

Students and school employees saw the attack shortly before 8 a.m. in a lot shared by Carolina Forest Middle School and Carolina Forest High School, Horry County police said in a news release.

The victim’s name was not released, and authorities would not say whether she was a student at the high school.

Edwin Lee Cornelius, 24, of Aynor, was arrested shortly after the stabbing. Police said charges were pending.

Both schools were locked down, though classes remained in session.

“People just sat in their car and waited and when you saw the ambulances, and fire trucks and police cars going on you knew something was going on,” said Jill Watts, 49, who has a child at Conway High School and works at an electric company near the school.

Calls to the school rang unanswered Thursday. An administrative assistant at the Horry County school district referred all questions to police, who did not immediately return phone calls.

The woman died at Conway Medical Center, Horry County Deputy Coroner Dan Bellamy told WBTW-TV of Florence. Conway is about 15 miles from Myrtle Beach.

Yepp, we used to live in Conway. We drove by that school many times.

It seems we are changing our weekends here in the UAE, starting in September the Gulf News reported:

Friday-Saturday weekend in UAE from September
Gulf News Report

Dubai: In September the UAE’s official weekend will be Friday and Saturday. All public sector establishments as well as government and private schools will adopt the new weekend in place of the present Thursday-Friday.

The decision was taken by the Cabinet in line with the directives of President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, WAM reported yesterday. The decision will apply to all federal and government organisations as well schools from September 1, it said.

The move was proposed to the Cabinet earlier by Dr. Ali Bin Abdullah Al Ka’abi, Minister of Labour.

A study conducted by the National Human Resources Development and Employment Authority (Tanmia) showed it would boost the stock markets, banks, insurance companies and the UAE’s foreign trade.

It would also help to increase private sector business activity and reduce losses from the long interruption caused by the difference between the UAE’s weekend and the rest of the world.

The business sector welcomed the news, saying it will boost the financial sector. Some private school academicians, however, were non-committal.

GulfNews:

A Dubai company will build the world’s longest hotel strip as part of a Dh100 billion tourist and leisure resort in the city, its developers said yesterday.

Unveiled by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, the project will be spread over 139 million square feet in Dubailand.

It will feature a cluster of 31 hotels offering more than 29,000 rooms and 100 theatres presenting live cultural shows.

Tatweer, a unit of Dubai Holding and builders of the project, said it will boast the world’s largest concentration of leading hotels and help Dubai cope with the 15 million tourists it hopes to attract by 2010.

Called Bawadi, the project will nearly double the current number of hotel rooms in Dubai through several themed hotels and also develop entertainment centres, shopping malls, theatres, restaurants and convention centres.

“Tourism as an industry plays a major part in the economic development of this country and this project was instructed to be developed by Shaikh Mohammad about a year ago,” Tatweer’s chief executive Saeed Al Muntafiq told reporters after the inauguration.

The giant project, set up after extensive research of the dynamics of the tourism industry, will also boost tourism dependent industries.

The centrepiece of Bawadi will be the world’s largest hotel, Asia-Asia, which alone will provide 6,500 rooms, combining 5,100 four star and an additional 1,400 five star rooms.

Okay, what’s wrong with this picture? The largest hotel in the world! 29000 hotel rooms! 1500 restaurants! Just what we need here

Over at DubaiConsumerMirror they show an example of how wrong it can be when there are misunderstandings in language in this part of the world.