DUBAI // A driver was killed and 10 road users were injured in a series of accidents at the weekend.
Speeding and careless driving were singled out as the cause of a number of crashes, Dubai Police said.
Brig Saif Al Mazrouei, director of the traffic department at Dubai Police, said the lorry driver died after sustaining serious injuries on Thursday night.
“The incident took place at around 10pm, when the driver of one lorry was speeding and crashed into another that had slowed down due to congestion,” he said.
“The driver of the speeding lorry was trapped in his vehicle.”
Also on Thursday, five people were injured in an accident on Emirates Road at 4.20pm.
“The driver of one vehicle did not anticipate a pile of sand that formed due to strong winds, and he ran into it,” he said, adding that all passengers sustained minor to moderate injuries and were taken to hospital.
At around 7.30pm the same day, a cyclist was injured when a woman hit him on University City Road. He was transported to hospital with minor injuries.
Brig Al Mazrouei said another biker was also injured at 12.15am on the Dubai-Al Ain Road when he came off his motorcycle.
“He crashed into the central reservation,” he said. “An initial investigation showed that he was speeding, lost control and the motorcycle flipped over.
“He was airlifted to hospital with broken bones and his injuries were described as critical.”
Also on Friday morning, two vehicles collided on Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road. One motorist swerved suddenly and hit the other, resulting in the serious injury of one driver.
Meanwhile, at 2.30pm, another driver was hurt on Sheikh Zayed Road when his vehicle flipped over after he bounced off of another vehicle into the street barrier.
And on Saturday, one man was seriously injured after being trapped in his vehicle on Emirates Road towards Abu Dhabi.
He was airlifted to hospital.
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Uefa Nations League: How it Works
The Uefa Nations League, introduced last year, has reached its final stage, to be played over five days in northern Portugal. The format of its closing tournament is compact, spread over two semi-finals, with the first, Portugal versus Switzerland in Porto on Wednesday evening, and the second, England against the Netherlands, in Guimaraes, on Thursday.
The winners of each semi will then meet at Porto’s Dragao stadium on Sunday, with the losing semi-finalists contesting a third-place play-off in Guimaraes earlier that day.
Qualifying for the final stage was via League A of the inaugural Nations League, in which the top 12 European countries according to Uefa's co-efficient seeding system were divided into four groups, the teams playing each other twice between September and November. Portugal, who finished above Italy and Poland, successfully bid to host the finals.
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
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- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
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- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Strait of Hormuz
Fujairah is a crucial hub for fuel storage and is just outside the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route linking Middle East oil producers to markets in Asia, Europe, North America and beyond.
The strait is 33 km wide at its narrowest point, but the shipping lane is just three km wide in either direction. Almost a fifth of oil consumed across the world passes through the strait.
Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the strait, a move that would risk inviting geopolitical and economic turmoil.
Last month, Iran issued a new warning that it would block the strait, if it was prevented from using the waterway following a US decision to end exemptions from sanctions for major Iranian oil importers.
