Don't expect a lot of Canadians at the annual landmark Dubai Shopping Festival next year unless they're willing to plunk down serious cash to enter the country.

The United Arab Emirates is set to begin charging Canadian travelers up to $1,000 for entry visas starting Jan. 2.

They would need to pay a $250 fee for a one-month visa, a $500 fee for a three-month visa and $1,000 for a visa valid for up to two weeks at a time over a six-month period, according to the website of the UAE Embassy in Ottawa.

Canada was previously among 30 countries whose citizens could obtain entry visas upon arrival at UAE airports. The new guidelines come amid a growing battle between the UAE and Canada over landing rights for commercial flights.

As many as 600 people aboard three different planes owned by Iranian airline companies were endangered when two of the aircraft made emergency landings after the engines caught fire and another ran off the runway, all within a 24-hour period.

Iran's aviation industry has a history of fatal technical failures, with 14 fatal civilian and military aviation accidents since 2000, seven of which have taken place during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency, according to a previous report by the Los Angeles Times.

Landlocked and still recovering from the decades of Soviet rule and a war with Azerbaijan that quickly followed, Armenia may not be the world's most attractive vacation destination.

But for those living in the neighboring Islamic Republic, it's a kind of earthly paradise.

In March, 27, 600 Iranians spent Nowruz, the Persian New Year, in the Armenian capital of Yerevan. 

But late spring and summer -- when the weather is comfortable, delicious fruits are harvested and outdoor events are numerous -- tourists also come in droves. 

An Armenian community leader in Tehran said up to 80% of Iran's Armenians, speculated to be as many as 500,000, travel to Armenia at least once a year.

The visitors can enjoy Armenian shish kebab and rice pilaf with a bottle of pomegranate wine or homemade liquor, or pick up a lahmajoun, an Armenian thin-crust meat pizza, on the street.

"Iranians are looking for reasons to leave their country so they can experience some freedoms," said Vanoohi Googasian, a Persian Armenian tour guide living in Yerevan.

"It's not about the specific holiday," she said. "It's about Iranians finding an excuse to leave their country to party."

Damascus is busily working on a highway that will eventually link Syria to Jerusalem in what has unofficially been called the Peace Road. Forward planning or wishful thinking?

On the outskirts of the village of Qatana, 16 miles southwest of Damascus, construction of a route nicknamed a "peace road" is well underway. 

The highway's planned route passes into Israel through the town of Quneitra in the Golan Heights, perhaps back in Syrian hands by the time the highway is completed.

Israel is participating in Madrid's  FITUR, the largest tourism fair for the Spanish-speaking and the Latin American market,  and is showcasing airlines, hotels and travel agencies in the Israeli exhibit in order to encourage tourism to the nation. 

The delegation, headed by Israel's tourism minister Stas Misezhnikov, is also interested in increasing cooperation  in this field with other nations, including those in its own region.  The Israelis visited the exhibits of Morocco, Egypt and Jordan, and Misezhnikov also exchanged warm greetings with the director-general of the Palestinian tourism minister, expressing hope for successful cooperation. The Syrians ignored the Israeli delegation.

But a pleasant surprise awaited the Israelis upon arrival at the Iranian exhibit, according to  the Israeli tourism ministry. Hesitating at first, the Iranian representative presented the exhibit of Iran's tourism options to the Israelis, and invited Misezhnikov to visit Iran. (Above, an Iranian exhibitor at the fair, left, talks with Misezhnikov.)

Misezhnikov reportedly shook hands with the  Iranian official  -- later identified in the press as tourism minister and vice president Hamid Baghaei -- and expressed the hope for better relations in the future. "We are both from the same region and tourism can be a bridge to peace," he said. "The people of Israel see the people of Iran as a friend but it is important that the Iranian president stop his wild incitement against Israel and bring Iran back into the family of nations." 

He was invited to visit Iran's  nature reserves and cultural sites, he says.

Iran denied the handshake or that the two even stood next to each other. The official news agency IRNA stated that the "Zionist regime published a blatant lie in order to distract global attention from its crimes in Gaza" in 2009.

"The Zionist regime is illegitimate and trying to promote their interests by issuing such news," foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said today, according to the semi-official Iranian Labor News Agency. "The Islamic Republic and Iranians despise Israel. The Zionist regime officials are aware of such feelings, therefore they try to conduct psychological warfare."

Downpours and heavy flooding have killed six people in the Sinai peninsula and nine others in Aswan in some of the worst storms in over a decade. Rain fell and lightening flashed across Egypt on Sunday, and more than 40 homes and 57 electrical towers have collapsed in cities and villages.

The resorts of Taba, Nuweiba and Sharm el Sheik on the Red Sea had temporary blackouts, and visitors spent Sunday evening lighting candles. The Sharm el Sheik airport was closed for several hours after rains destroyed part of its ceiling, and the city's main telephone communications center was severely damaged.

Handling an influx of 2.5 million pilgrims is a challenge during a good year, but at a time of increased tensions with Iran and rampant fears of swine flu, Saudi authorities are on high alert for any threat that could disrupt hajj, the annual holy Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

On Sunday, security forces sent a clear message to would-be saboteurs by staging a huge military demonstration involving thousands of troops, armored vehicles, helicopters, and first response teams. The Saudi government has announced it will deploy more than 100,000 security and emergency personnel for hajj, which will last from Wednesday to Sunday.

Sunday's show of force comes after months of deteriorating relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran over the Houthi rebellion in northern Yemen, with both sides accusing the other of military intervention. Last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad warned against Saudi restrictions on Iranian pilgrims, eliciting a sharp rebuke from Riyadh with the top Saudi cleric warning against the politicizing of hajj.

"We hope we will not be obliged to resort to force," Saudi interior minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz told reporters after the demonstration Sunday, referring to calls by some Iranian figures for their pilgrims to use hajj as an opportunity to protest against the United States and Israel, Agence France Press reported.

Just two months after Dubai unveiled its plush metro system, Qatar announced it will build its own multibillion-dollar railway that will include a local metro in Doha, its capital, as well as freight and passenger trains to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia via the world's longest causeway.

The railway is expected to cost $25 billion and be completed by 2026, but officials are eager to have sections up and running by 2022, when Qatar hopes to host the World Cup, Reuters reported.

The deal between Qatari Diar, a real estate investment company owned by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, and the German transport company Deutsche Bahn was announced today. 

The contract comes against a background of increased spending on rail projects by the oil-rich Arab gulf states that is expected to exceed $100 billion.

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

Photo: The west bay of Doha, Qatar. Credit: wikimedia commons

Contrary to reports in the Iranian news media and this paper, the son of a well-known Aria Airlines executive who perished in a crash aboard one of his company's planes last summer is alive and well, and hoping to clear up some facts about his late dad.

The executive, Mehdi Dadpay, or Dadpei, was a retired U.S.-trained air force fighter pilot. 

After the revolution, he risked his liberty to return home, distinguishing himself as a commander of an Iranian air force unit fighting in the Iran-Iraq war. He later organized humanitarian interventions in disaster areas. All this earned him the "grudging respect" of the political leadership, his son Ali Dadpay says. 

Turkey continued its decade-old quest to expand its influence in the Middle East, announcing the end of visa restrictions for travel to Syria.  

The two nations' foreign ministers announced that Syrians could travel to Turkey without visas, and vice versa, as the countries' leaders held talks on Turkish-mediated efforts to ease tensions between Baghdad and Damascus and foster peace between Syria and Israel, according to the English-language Today's Zaman news website. 

The two countries also signed a cooperation deal similar to one Turkey penned with Iraq. For years Iranians and Turks have been able to cross their border without visas.

Though a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which hosts a major United States military base, Turkey maintains strong diplomatic and economic relations with many of the Middle East's main players, including U.S. rivals Iran and Syria.

In conversation after conversation, in cocktail parties and sheesha cafes from Lebanon to Syria to Jordan, one question continues to pop up over and over again:

What was up with the two Americans who illegally crossed the Lebanese border into Syria and found themselves suddenly locked up by Syrian authorities?

The two journalists, Holli Chmela, 27, and Taylor Luck, 23, were writing for the Amman-based English-language Jordan Times. They went missing Oct. 1 during a holiday in Lebanon. They showed up a week later, safe and sound, locked up in a Syrian prison. They were released to American officials in Damascus, and went back to Amman.

But the real story of what happened remains murky.

Were they plucky journalists trying to get a scoop, as the Syrians say?

Or were they a couple of hapless kids suckered into intrigue, as they contended in a lengthy article for their newspaper?

Or were they up to something more nefarious, as some have whispered?

Readers in the U.S. and abroad have been generous with their insights and queries.

The fate of 11 Europeans and eight Egyptians kidnapped by masked bandits is unfolding amid sharp rocks and painted caves in a Sahara desert that is at once sparsely majestic and disorientating -- much like the information released about the hostages by the Egyptian government.

In a confusing swirl of developments in recent days, the tourists were reported kidnapped, then freed, then not freed. The latest is that the German government is negotiating to release five Germans, five Italians, one Romanian and eight Egyptians who were snatched Friday near Gilf Al-Kebir in remote southwest Egypt.

“The location of the kidnappers has been pinpointed. It’s a no-man’s land between the Sudan, Libya and Egypt borders,” Boutros Sadiq, Sudan’s undersecretary of foreign affairs told journalists Tuesday. “We are not going to have an operation that harms the tourists.”