Middle East

Dubai, the Manhattan of the Middle East

Dubai, the Manhattan of the Middle East

23 Photos

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — With its glistening skyscrapers and man-made waterways, Dubai Marina is a playground for the rich.

Dubai’s rapid transformation from a desert outpost into one of the world’s most architecturally stunning cities is mapped out in the Marina. What 15 years ago was mostly empty land is today a bustling neighborhood with a skyline that pierces through the clouds.

More than 150 high-rise buildings, stacked row after row, make up this 50 million square foot (4.65 million square meter) waterfront neighborhood built around a man-made canal where the wealthy park their yachts.

The area is sometimes referred to as the Manhattan of the Middle East and some of its buildings are promoted by realtors as having “Manhattan-style” architecture and amenities. A 12,400 square foot (1,152 square meter) apartment in the Marina was put on the market this year for a cool 56 million dirhams, or about $15.25 million.

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Young refugees bear the brunt of the Syria’s civil war

Young refugees bear the brunt of the Syria’s civil war

18 Photos

MAFRAQ, Jordan (AP) — Gathered on the desert floor, the Askar family chants prayers for their 1-year-old daughter Jawahir, who died of malnutrition and is buried beneath the sands of their informal refugee camp far from their Syrian hometown.

“She was born in a camp and buried near the camp,” her father Mohammed Askar recounts, still in anguish over her Feb. 24 death. “I wish the circumstances were different and I could have saved my daughter, but we are poor and powerless and we have only God with us.”

Of the 4 million refugees who fled Syria’s grinding civil war, it is the conflict’s youngest exiles, like Jawahir, who often bear the brunt of its woes.

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Baltimore United Viewfinders, part 1

Baltimore United Viewfinders, part 1

12 photos, 3 videos

Baltimore United Viewfinders is a youth leadership initiative where participants use multimedia arts to explore their definition of self and place, encourage community action and exchange visual and verbal dialogue.

What they don’t say on their website is that they’re a group of teenagers that use art and photography to document their lives in East Baltimore.

In recent years, the area known as Middle East in Baltimore – just east of Johns Hopkins Medical Center – has been in conversations of urban decay, housing abandonment and conflicts between residents and Hopkins.

But if you look at the groups’ published photo book, ‘Eastside Stories,’ you see a different Middle East. [Read more below]

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