Dubai kicks off delayed Expo 2020, the 1st World Fair in the Middle East
The United Arab Emirates spent eight years and billions of dollars turning 1,080 acres of Dubai desert into the site of Expo 2020, the first World Fair in the Middle East. Dubai opened Expo 2020 on Friday, a year late due to the COVID-19 pandemic, showing off "a buzzing futuristic landscape with robots, a new metro station, multi-million dollar pavilions and so-called districts with names like 'sustainability' and 'opportunity,'" The Associated Press reports.
The Dubai organizers say 192 nations are represented at the World Fair, including the U.S., which has a replica of the Space X Falcon 9 rocket at its pavilion. The opening ceremony was held in a central dome that Dubai says is the world's largest 360-degree projection screen, built, AP notes, with 8.5 miles of steel.
World expos have been venues for different countries to mingle and show off their new technologies since the London World Fair of 1851. Most of them have been in Europe and North America, including several in the U.S., starting in 1876. The telephone, TV, Ferris wheel, elevator, carbonated soda, sewing machine, and Heinz Ketchup all made their worldwide debuts at world fairs, and several iconic structures — the Eiffel Tower, the Space Needle, San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts, and the Unisphere in Queens, New York, for example — were built for the expositions.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, welcomed guests to the UAE, where "the ethos of this land" is providing a place where people from every nation, East or West, can mingle for business and pleasure.
Critics noted that the emirates built the desert dreamscape using low-paid foreign labor. Also, the UAE is less an "open and tolerant country" than it is a land where "abusive authorities forcefully bar all peaceful criticism and dissent," Human Rights Watch said in a report on Expo 2020. "The UAE has embarked on a decades-long effort to whitewash its reputation on the international stage."
-
Venezuela’s Trump-shaped power vacuumIN THE SPOTLIGHT The American abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has thrust South America’s biggest oil-producing state into uncharted geopolitical waters
-
Most data centers are being built in the wrong climateThe explainer Data centers require substantial water and energy. But certain locations are more strained than others, mainly due to rising temperatures.
-
‘Maps are the ideal metaphor for our models of what the world might be’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Iran’s government rocked by protestsSpeed Read The death toll from protests sparked by the collapse of Iran’s currency has reached at least 19
-
Israel approves new West Bank settlementsSpeed Read The ‘Israeli onslaught has all but vanquished a free Palestinian existence in the West Bank’
-
US offers Ukraine NATO-like security pact, with caveatsSpeed Read The Trump administration has offered Ukraine security guarantees similar to those it would receive from NATO
-
Hong Kong court convicts democracy advocate LaiSpeed Read Former Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai was convicted in a landmark national security trial
-
Australia weighs new gun laws after antisemitic attackSpeed Read A father and son opened fire on Jewish families at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, killing at least 15
-
How Bulgaria’s government fell amid mass protestsThe Explainer The country’s prime minister resigned as part of the fallout
-
Benin thwarts coup attemptSpeed Read President Patrice Talon condemned an attempted coup that was foiled by the West African country’s army
-
Femicide: Italy’s newest crimeThe Explainer Landmark law to criminalise murder of a woman as an ‘act of hatred’ or ‘subjugation’ but critics say Italy is still deeply patriarchal
