Dubai pursues ambitious public transport targets

Oxford Business Group: "There are signs that the authority’s campaign is working. Public transport as a share of all travel in Dubai rose from 6% in 2006 to around 15% last year, the RTA said, putting the emirate on track to meet a target of 20% by 2020. The emirate is looking to boost the contribution further to 30% by 2030."

People abandoning luxury cars in Dubai

Car Keys: "Pictures of the cars, including that £1 million Enzo, have sparked fury on social media, with many assuming that the hyper-wealthy citizens of Dubai are so rich and so numb to the value of the things that they own that they simply leave the car when they’re bored and get another.

However, in truth one of the primary reasons that so many expensive luxury cars end up abandoned is due to Dubai’s struggle in the face of the effects of the global financial crisis, along with plunging oil prices."

Former head of MI6 praises Islamic State governance

independent.co.uk : "Isis offers those living under its rule better governance in some respects than they received from the state before it took over. Corruption is far less prevalent, and justice, albeit brutal, is swift and more evenly applied. "

Terrorists behind Mosul University attack may have been trained in USA

Coalition airstrike on the University of #Mosul captured live on camera. Where's the world?pic.twitter.com/iJrX3uMlKW

— Maghrebi (@MaghrebiHD) March 22, 2016

Over 1,000 medically unfit drivers suspended

Khaleej Times: "Over 1,200 drivers have been suspended by the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) after launch of the 'No Worries' initiative. However, the initiative has contributed to reducing heavy vehicle accidents rate by as much as 40 per cent."

This should give you an idea of how fare-free public transport could save lives and money. The problem is not unfit drivers, or distracted drives, or buzzed drivers. The problem is drivers.

This is why US so desperate to manage Kurdish nationalism - oil.

rudaw : "In other oil-related news the Kurds have consolidated their control over Kirkuk’s oil by agreeing to sell oil pumped from Kirkuk province. One of the so-called disputed territories that came under complete Kurdish control after the Iraqi Army fled Islamic States’ advance across Northern Iraq in the summer of 2014.

Kirkuk crude is exported along with oil pumped from the rest of the Kurdistan Region through the Kirkuk to Ceyhan oil pipeline. Kirkuk’s governor Najmaldin Karim told Bloomberg on Wednesday that $10 million per month made from the sale of this crude will be placed in a bank account for his province.

However exports remain halted for the time being following the sabotage of part of that pipeline in the troubled southeastern Turkey last February 17."

US-backed thugs terrorize people in Syria

Syria Direct: "Residents are reportedly heading south, deeper into IS-controlled areas, rather than north, east or west into territory currently controlled by the Kurdish-majority SDF because they say they are afraid of arrests, expulsions and revenge killings, Abdullah al-Ahmad, an activist in Al-Hasakah city, told Syria Direct on Monday.

“The crimes that civilians witnessed the Kurdish militias commit in neighboring villages, such as expelling them [from their homes], along with arrests, killings and pillaging, is driving them toward IS despite people’s hatred of them,” said al-Ahmad."