On one side of the table, the Irishman Daniel Kinahan; on the other, the Bosnian-born Dutchman Edin Gaçanin, alias Tito; opposite, the Moroccan Ridouan Taghi, and at one end, the Italian Raffaele Imperiale. They are conversing in a private room with sea views of the luxurious Burj Al Arab in Dubai. The pandemic has not yet arrived. They control the most important cocaine cartel in the world and feel untouchable. Impunity. Each one fulfills their role. The Irish manage the routes and distribution across various European countries. Gaçanin is the broker, the logistics and financing of the operations. Imperiale transports cocaine to the Italian Camorra. Taghi, the visible face of the Mocro Maffia, supervises the entry of drugs through Dutch and Belgian ports. Power in capital letters. The drug business was decided in Dubai.

The day after the night when an entire civilization was about to be annihilated, a robot-man and a robot-dog were doing somersaults in Dubai. Tourists were photographing them as they waited to enter the future. The future has been very dizzying these days in the Gulf countries. The uncertain future of the Gulf is still dizzying.

The head of International for ARA and special envoy to Dubai, Francesc Millan, answers subscribers' questions about the war in the Middle East in a live conversation with deputy director Carla Turró.

This article is being written from the 41st floor of one of the many superlative hotels in Dubai. 

Hejoint US-Israeli attack against Iran It had been brewing for some time in the offices of Washington and Tel Aviv, but the imminence of the offensive didn't become clear until the day before it began. This short window of opportunity and the rapid spread of the conflict, with Tehran's response against several countries in the regionThe closure of airspace has taken citizens around the world by surprise, particularly those who were in the Persian Gulf on Saturday, whether working, on vacation, or traveling. Many are now stranded, uncertain of when they will be able to return home. For this reason, the Spanish government has already begun evacuating 30,000 Spaniards from the region, as announced by Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares at the press conference following the cabinet meeting. He explained that 175 Spanish citizens are already flying to Madrid from Abu Dhabi and are scheduled to arrive at Barajas Airport at 7:00 PM. He urged all Spaniards in the area to register as travelers to help keep track of the number of people in the Middle East. A request that the Catalan government has also made—currently counting 1,200 Catalans—with the aim of being able to send instructions for their return to Catalonia if the violence escalates. In fact, the Minister of Foreign Action, Jaume Duch, has assumed that the number of citizens is higher: "These are the people we would like to identify themselves, so that we have the means to know who they are and where they are, and to be in contact with them," he said. According to data from Idescat, 6,115 Catalans live in the Middle East.

The chocolate tile filled with pistachio praline and toasted pastry kataifi (a type of filo pastry) has become a mass phenomenon that has divided chocolatiers into two camps: those who don't want to know anything about it, because they find it commercial; and those who have started making it because they consider it to be as good an invention as After Eight, which was created in the United Kingdom in 1962. The fact is that this innovative chocolate tile, created by the Egyptian Sarah Hamouda in 2022, has a high price due to the filling, specifically the praline, the pistachios with sugar, because the nuts cost around thirty euros per kilo. Therefore, the chocolatier Lluc Crusellas He says that "if you find a Dubai chocolate for two euros, it's a fake Dubai tile, without pistachios."

Dubai Airport has launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) system that allows passengers to pass through immigration without having to present documents, simply by walking through a red-carpeted tunnel. The system scans each person's biometric data to identify them without requiring any paperwork, thus shortening the process, which takes only about 14 seconds.