Posing as a renowned U.S. plastic surgeon, Steven Moos managed to lure scores of patients into his Dubai villa with rosy promises of beauty at a low cost, according to officials.

In his underground clinic, he allegedly nipped and tucked and performed various delicate cosmetic surgery procedures on customers lying on top of his kitchen table. Some local media reports say the conditions were so primitive that Moos, apparently lacking adequate surgical equipment, threw removed fat from liposuction operations into a cooking pot.

The Dubai police arrested Moos in February and charged him with endangering the lives of patients, impersonating a physician and carrying out unlicensed activities, reported the United Arab Emirates-based English newspaper the National.

Several of Moos' patients are said to be suffering from serious complications.

Dr. Jeehan Qadir, executive director of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery in Dubai, said she has seen at least two women who went under Moos' knife.

"There is one lady who has had about 10 procedures on her lips by this man. It is all cuts," she told the National.

“These women trusted him to do a good job. We are all very upset about what happened. Cosmetic surgery is something people think very hard about and this man has abused their trust," she added.

According to officials at the Dubai Health Authority, Moos was impersonating and using the good reputation of Dr. Steven Hopping, a top cosmetic surgeon based in Washington, D.C. Hopping performs a few surgeries per year at the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery Hospital in Dubai.

The scam emerged when a patient in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) sent Hopping a fake business card with his name on it, asking if it really was him. Hopping immediately contacted the clinic in Dubai, which then notified the Dubai authorities.

Aside from facing legal charges in Dubai, Moos also is wanted in the U.S. by the FBI and Interpol on charges of drug trafficking and crimes against life and health, among others.

The online newspaper the Oregonian says that Moos previously worked as a doctor in the town of Tigard in Oregon and then fled the country after police found cocaine, marijuana and other illegal drugs at his million-dollar home, which he shares with his wife and four children.

According to the report, Moos got into trouble in 2000 when the Oregon Board of Medical Examiners fined him several thousands of dollars and put him on probation for 10 years for prescribing medications, including Viagra, over the Internet to people whom he'd never examined. Federal prosecutors also accused him of trying to import mislabeled human growth hormone from China.

Moos' medical license was revoked in 2003, and the authorities issued an arrest warrant for him in 2004 when he and his family disappeared, the report added.

His arrest in Dubai, however, does not mark the first time the Dubai authorities have busted bogus doctors.

In February, the Dubai police raided an illegal plastic surgery clinic that was being run out of an apartment in a crackdown on underground cosmetic salons.

When the squad barged onto the premises, they found unlicensed surgeons performing surgery on patients on makeshift beds. Surgical equipment was kept alongside with kitchen utensils in the apartment, reported the National.

-- Alexandra Sandels in Beirut

Photo: Steven Moos, who posed as a top U.S. plastic surgeon and who also is wanted by the FBI, has been arrested in Dubai. Credit: FBI

From boat graves to sarcophaguses and from tomb robbers to the temple of a lion goddess, Egypt is a history of epochs tumbling into one another.

Defined by masterpieces such as the pyramids, and by lesser known treasures stretching from the Grecco-Roman period to Napoleonic times, the nation’s art and architecture speak to the distinctive powers and religions that have risen along the Nile for more than 6,000 years. 

Some of it may have been lost if not for nearly $15 million in restorations and excavations done by the American Research Center in Egypt and mostly funded by grants from the United States Agency for International Development. The work -- part cultural reclamation, part exploration of unexpected wonders – includes salvaging the temples at Karnak and Luxor and saving medieval paintings at the Church of St. Anthony. 

A new book, "Preserving Egypt’s Cultural Heritage," offers intriguing glimpses into dozens of projects. A collection of essays edited by Randi Danforth, the book, which includes before and after photographs, is a reminder of the passion and meticulousness that comes with conserving Egypt’s glorious and often troubled past.

The splendor is much diminished these days. The world’s first empire, which the book describes as once spanning “from the fourth cataract of the Nile in the south to the Euphrates River to the northeast,” disappeared centuries ago. Today’s Egypt is a poor, chaotic and dusty offspring, a nation still important but slipping in stature in a changing Middle East. 

"Preserving Egypt’s Cultural Heritage" is the story of saving for new generations what flourished from the days of Pharaohs to Christian monasteries to the rise of Islam. In an essay on a project to lower groundwater in Old Cairo to protect the Abu Serga Church, where the Holy Family was believed to have stayed, is a letter penned by an Italian traveler from another time:

“I was in the city of Babylon in Egypt where there was a house in which the Blessed Virgin and her son lived when they fled to Egypt. There is an old and beautiful church. . .and under the main altar of this great church is a covered chapel,” wrote Franciscus Pipinus de Bononia in 1320.

The book, distributed by the American University in Cairo Press, has many such tales for Egyptologists who may not have the maps or the time to explore tombs and crypts.

-- Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

Photo: Police stand guard in the Valley of the Kings. Credit: Reuters

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday accused President Obama of threatening to use "chemical and nuclear" weapons against nations that "do not submit to the greed of the United States."  The remarks came a day after the White House unveiled a new strategy that did not rule out nuclear strikes against Iran and North Korea.   

"Be careful," Ahmadinejad warned Obama, according to numerous media reports. "If you set step in [President George] Bush's path, the nations' response would be the same tooth-breaking one as they gave Bush."

Obama's new nuclear strategy has been hailed by some as a step toward reducing U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons by ruling out nuclear attacks on non-nuclear states that adhere to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The White House made clear, however, that this promise does not extend to "outliers" like Iran and North Korea.

Oh, those lazy Iranians.

Say what?

A mid-ranking government official in Esfahan has riled the national psyche by proclaiming: “Iranians are lazier than the average people in the world.”

One wouldn’t think so given the steady buzz of news, including street protests, political battles over subsidy cuts and the perpetual brinkmanship and diplomacy with the international community over the country’s nuclear program. But Mohammad Reza Javadi Yegane believes his countrymen have become sloths since the days of the Islamic Revolution.

The semi-official news agency Tabnak cited Yegane, a member of the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, in reminding its readers that three years ago Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned that “social laziness is the inner foe of Iranians.”

Some businessmen agree. Mostafa Bromandi, owner of a printing house, said: “My workers are lazy. Out of the eight hours I pay them, they only work two hours.... The more educated, the lazier. My accountant has a BA degree. He is the laziest white-collar worker.” 

A barber found such accusations a bit curious "On the one hand," he said, "the government complains that the holidays in Iran are the longest in the world. On the other hand .. when unrest was fomenting in Tehran in the postelection, the government announced more holidays." 

Maryam, a bookkeeper who wouldn’t give her last name, said: “Yes, Yegane is right. If we were not suffering from social laziness we should have toppled this incompetent and inefficient government.”

-- Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran

Photo: Iranians in the snow on Mount Tochal overlooking Tehran. Credit: Associated Press  

A war video, leaked on the Internet site Wikileaks.org, shows U.S. military helicopters opening fire on men on a Baghdad street. Two of the individuals are thought to be an Iraqi photographer and a driver, both of whom worked for the Reuters news agency. Other men are believed to be holding guns. 

The video is a look at the ugly realities of war. In Baghdad, news of the video prompted a protest and demands for an Iraqi government inquiry from the Iraqi Journalists Union, according to the Associated Press. 

The leak came on a day when Baghdad was shocked by more bombings and uncertainty over the political process. The U.S. military said it was investigating the video and its contents. 

Iraqi journalists and those working with the media have paid a huge price since 2003 as at least 221 media professionals have been killed, according to Reporters Without Borders.

-- Los Angeles Times

Video: Purported  footage of a U.S. attack on a Baghdad street. Credit: YouTube

Dozens of people with physical disabilities have been camping outside the Egyptian parliament for more than 50 days, trying to pressure officials into granting them basic rights such as jobs, housing and the chance to start a business.  

Egyptian law states that 5% of workers in companies and factories must come from the ranks of the disabled. But the protesters claim they are discriminated against and can seldom find work.   

"The 5% ratio is absolutely ridiculous compared to the number of disabled people in Egypt," demonstrator Saied Ali Mohamed, whose left leg is paralyzed, told The Times. "When a handicapped is lucky enough to be hired, he is simply asked to stay at home and receive a very humble salary. Companies consider us a liability and they employ some of us only because of their legal requirements."

Many of the disabled said they believe Egyptian culture and society have shunned them. "We’ve been totally marginalized by the government for decades now," Mahrousa Salem, coordinator of the demonstration, told The Times. "All laws stating disabled people's rights are inefficient, and unfortunately the government considers us as second-grade citizens."

Walid Ali Shahat was a member of the Egyptian wheelchair basketball team that won the African championship in 2008. He said the government's poor investment in disabled people must come to an end.

The 28-year old Iranian-Kuwaiti composer and singer Emma Shah has written and performed in many languages, including Arabic, Russian, French and Japanese.

But her latest choice of language did not go over so well in Kuwait. After singing in Hebrew at a recent gathering in Kuwait City's Alumni Club, she's now being accused of promoting Zionism and normalization of ties with Israel, reports the UAE-based English newspaper Gulf News.

Her performance upset Kuwaiti religious figures, including the religious scholar Sheikh Mohammad Awadhi. In an article published in the Kuwaiti daily Al Rai newspaper, he condemned the singer for  "alien attitudes that clash with the spirit, culture and values of the Kuwaiti society."

Dubai Police Chief Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim returned to the spotlight after weeks of relative silence to reveal that "one or two" more European suspects are linked to the assassination of Hamas operative Mahmoud Mabhouh, but their names have not been released for "security reasons."

In a lengthy and wide-ranging interview with Jaber Harmi of the Qatari newspaper Al Sharq published Sunday, Tamim praised Britain's cooperation in the investigation but said that other European countries are not working "in the spirit of cooperation."

"Patience has its limits," he warned, without specified consequences.

Suspected Israeli assassins allegedly used the identities of European nationals to forge fake passports to enter Dubai and kill Mabhouh. Experts say that Dubai has tried to verify the frauds with European governments before releasing new names. 

So far, Dubai has relied on the cooperation of other countries to confirm or deny the falsification of their passports. If one of Dubai's European partners was dragging its feet in helping to identify the two unnamed suspects, Tamim comments may be interpreted as a warning to hurry up before Dubai takes matters into its own hands.

"In each case before they have checked with and tried to get the country to verify that this person may exist but that it’s not the person in the passport," said Kenneth Wise, a researchers at B’huth, a Dubai-think tank. "The goal is to protect the innocent but also prevent themselves from being caught up in something they can't verify. They don’t want to be accused of fiction."

State security forces on Saturday raided the home of Ahmed Mahanna, director of Dawin publications and distribution, confiscating his computer and copies of "ElBaradei and the Dream of a Green Revolution."

"Breaking into the house of a publisher and arresting him for a book about ElBaradei in such an ambiguous way without giving reasons or declaring charges is a serious violation of freedom of opinion and expression," the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information said in a statement. "It clearly shows the intention of the government to gag all dissenting voices as well as those supporting ElBaradei and the National Front for Change."

[Updated, 1:10 p.m. PST: The Associated Press is reporting that Mahanna has been released from jail.]

A kiss on the cheek is one thing. But don't get caught smooching in public in Dubai, or you might end up serving time behind bars. 

A court in the United Arab Emirates city-state upheld the one-month prison sentence Sunday of a British couple accused of locking lips and touching each other at a restaurant, in violation of public decency laws, the daily paper Gulf News reported.

Dubai resident Ayman Najafi, 24, and visitor Charlotte Adams, 25, (pictured at right) both British nationals, were arrested in November and charged with indecent behavior and public drunkenness after they were accused by an Emirati woman of locking lips at a restaurant in front of her kids. 

The high-profile case is the latest in which the loose lifestyles of the United Arab Emirates' large expatriate community have run up against the prim and puritanical values of the Arabian Peninsula.

Iranian women won't compete in an upcoming soccer match unless the governing board overseeing the game changes a rule barring the Islamic hijab from official matches, Iran's semi-official Mehr News Agency is reporting.

Iranian officials complain that FIFA -- the acronym for the world's federation of football associations -- has barred Iran's women's soccer team from wearing religious headscarves during the August Youth Olympic Games in Singapore.

Iranians all over the country Friday celebrated Sizdah Bedar, the annual Persian holiday on the 13th day of the Persian calendar year, during which people head outside to celebrate nature and family.

But people marked the holidays in different ways. 

In a park in or near the ethnic Azeri northwestern Iranian city of Orumieh, dozens of picnickers joined together in a protest march, chanting "Azerbaijan! Azerbaijan!" in a show of ethnic politics that must make the government nervous. (See video below)

At a park in western Tehran, men played backgammon or chess, while young women inside makeshift tents could be seen without their head scarves, in a gesture of defiance against the nation's Islamic order. 

Young men smoked sheesha as families performed line dances while striking tambourines.

[Updated, 12:30 p.m. PST: Recently uploaded video from Tehran below captures the spirit of the day.

Nothing but people out enjoying themselves.]

Security forces were out as well, making sure the celebrations didn't turn into the type of anti-government protests they so fear, as the video below from the eastern city of Mashhad shows.

Are Saudi Arabia's treacherous factional domestic politics behind the ongoing legal battle over its decision to execute a former Lebanese television psychic convicted of sorcery?

Ali Hossein Sabat, convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death by beheading in Saudi Arabia, received a temporary stay of execution Thursday, just one day before his sentence was to be carried out. It was the latest development in Sabat's two-year ordeal.

Saudi Arabia is among the strictest countries in such legal matters, and any practices that could be considered "magic" are punishable by death.

But there appears to be more at stake than the letter of the law. One Lebanese legal expert who is familiar with Saudi law and politics described the case against Sabat as a "muscle show" by conservatives who may be seeking to embarrass reformist leaders such as King Abdullah.

 "I don't know on what grounds they arrested him, since he didn't commit [the crime] in Saudi, he's not a Saudi citizen, and it wasn't directed against Saudi, and usually one of these criteria must be fulfilled," the expert said, asking that her name not be published because she travels to Saudi Arabia.

Smoking hashish is an illegal activity many Egyptians enjoy. From young students to older generations and from the unemployed to businessmen, lighting up is something of a national tradition. But a recent government crackdown on drug smuggling is diminishing supplies.

"I can't get on with my daily tasks as I previously did. I and my workmates used to start our working day with smoking hashish, and then I'd smoke a bit more after dinner," said a 29-year-old accountant who asked that his name not be used. "Now we can only do so for one or two days a week instead of every day."

The young girl had had enough. For months the Yemeni teenager named Hind from the Red Sea town of Hodeida had allegedly been repeatedly beaten and sexually abused by her 70-something husband to whom she was married off by her father and three uncles for the equivalent of $1,400 last year, according to the Yemeni English newspaper the Yemen Times.

She tried to run away from her forced marriage and abuser several times but was caught fleeing by one of the uncles who had arranged her marriage.

Angered that she had tried to run away from the deal he had brokered, the uncle felt Hind, thought to be 13 or 14 years old, needed to be punished for her deed.

So he put a long, heavy iron chain around her neck and tied her to his house like a dog for two months. The uncle apparently made the chain long enough so that Hind could move from the yard to the kitchen and the bathroom.

During this hellish time, Hind was also allegedly beaten by her uncle and sexually abused several times by her cousins.

She finally managed to escape two weeks ago, and details of her tragic story have begun to emerge.

The woman and her 5-year-old son, Mehdi, stand outside their apartment building in North Jannatabad, a lower-middle-class district in the north of Tehran.

She is clad in black chador and a firm black scarf, signatures of her devoted Muslim upbringing, a background similar to that of her jailed husband, sentenced to 10 years in prison for crimes against national security. She is among the hundreds of relatives of those imprisoned. They include the family of economist Saeed Laylaz, featured in Thursday's Los Angeles Times.

She speaks in hushed tones. The neighbors in her four-unit apartment building are very nice and understanding, she says. But she doesn't want to draw unwanted attention to herself. So she keeps a low profile.

The day her husband, a journalist, was arrested she had a gut feeling that this time would be different from last time, when he spent a few months in jail during the presidency of the reformist President Mohammad Khatami. "I was shocked and panicked, though I did not cry or weep in front of the security men intruding our apartment," she says. 

The human rights group Amnesty International has issued an emergency appeal to Lebanese authorities to try to halt the anticipated execution of a Lebanese national in Saudi Arabia on charges of sorcery.

In the appeal issued late Wednesday, Amnesty urged Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who grew up in the Saudi kingdom and maintains strong ties to the royal family, to try to halt the execution of Ali Hussein Sibat, scheduled to die Thursday.

Sibat, a former television show host, was convicted late last year on charges of sorcery for making predictions on his program. He was arrested by the kingdom's dreaded morality police in 2008 while there on a religious pilgrimage.

"Ali Hussein Sibat appears to have been convicted solely for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression," Malcolm Smart, director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa program, said in a statement distributed to the news media.

"We urge the Lebanese authorities to do all they can to prevent this execution," Smart said. "We are calling on King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia not to let this or other executions go ahead. It is high time the Saudi Arabian government joined the international trend towards a worldwide moratorium on executions."

After months of legal back and forth, a high court judge confirmed the death sentence on grounds that his televised prognostications “made him an infidel.”

-- Los Angeles Times

It may have been fashionable in 2007 to call the president of Syria "a snake, a butcher, a liar ... and a criminal," but it could make things awkward when you're sitting across from him three years later.

Then again, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's meeting with Bashar al Assad on Wednesday – the first in six years – was really more of a reunion. The notoriously mercurial Jumblatt was a staunch ally of Syria before he rode the wave of anti-Syrian sentiment to the forefront of Lebanese politics, and then switched sides again when he felt the wind shift.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if privately Bashar was like ‘well played’ to Jumblatt," said Harvard researcher and Lebanon expert Elias Muhanna. Jumblatt "always gets out ahead of everyone else, and I think [Assad] understands that, so it could very well be a frank and candid conversation."

Literature is supposed to transcend borders, but sometimes it runs up against them.

Author Ala Hlehel is among the winners of the Beirut39 literary competition, which acknowledges fresh voices in Arab literature in a list of 39 writers under the age of 39. The writers are invited to a four-day festival  in Beirut in April.

Hlehel, a native of the Galilee village of Jish and today a resident of Acre, is an Arab citizen of Israel. Israel prohibits all its citizens and residents from visiting countries defined as "enemy states"-- including Lebanon--without a special permit. 

When he learned he was among the winners,  Hlehel asked authorities for permission to travel to Lebanon to receive his award. A few months went by. Authorities said they were waiting to learn the position of Israel's General Security Services.

The festival is now two weeks away.  Adalah-- the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel-- submitted a petition to the Supreme Court on the author's behalf. Attorneys Haneen Naamnih and Hassan Jabareen argued that the failure of the Minister of Interior and the prime minister to issue a decision on his request "violates his constitutional right to leave the country and his right for freedom of employment and expression, as well as his due process rights for a fair hearing," an Adalah press release said. 

The threatening letters and phone calls at night trickled in at a steady pace. They had become a part of everyday life for Randa, an Algerian transsexual and one of the pioneers in the Arab world's gay and transsexual activist movement.

One letter dropped in Randa's mailbox said, "We will kill you." Another one read, "You are a threat to all Muslims in Algeria." In mosques around the country, Randa's name was being circulated. Still, she refused to be intimidated and shrugged off the threats.

But one day, a friend showed up at her house in Algiers, the Algerian capital, with a worried look on his face. He had bad news. 

"One my friends took me for a ride in his car and told me, 'You have 10 days to leave the country,'" Randa, the author of a new book about her experiences, said in an interview with Babylon & Beyond. "Influential people had come to talk to him." 

She knew she had to move quickly, but she had no idea where she'd go. Getting a visa to Europe would certainly take longer than 10 days. No, they'd get her before that, Randa figured. A visa to Lebanon, however, would only take a few days. And she had friends in Beirut. 

So, Lebanon it was.

A year later, Randa, wearing a long black dress, high heels and sporting new black hair extensions, is greeting crowds of guests and reporters with a smile on her face at a signing for her memoir in the garden of a Beirut art studio.

The biography, "Memoirs of Randa the Trans," co-written with Lebanese journalist Hazem Saghyieh, was recently published in Arabic by the Dar-Al Saqi publishing house and recounts Randa's life story and struggles as a transsexual in Algeria and Beirut.