Exotic and organic teas are wooing tea drinkers and challenging traditional black tea's dominance as never before, tea industry experts say, as a tea factory in Dubai bids to become the world's largest.

The shift in global tea-drinking trends is felt at the Jebel Ali Free Zone, despite it being more than 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) from the nearest tea bushes in the lush misty mountains of South Asia and East Africa.

Dubai's DP World, the world's fourth biggest port operator, made its debut on the London Stock Exchange on Wednesday, one week after Swiss commodities giant Glencore joined the market.

The stock began trade at 830 pence per share and about 157,500 shares have changed hands so far, according to the LSE website.

Argentina legend Diego Maradona is to take over as coach next season at Dubai's Al-Wasl, the club announced on Monday

"Al-Wasl Sports Club is proud to announce the appointment of Diego Armando Maradona as head coach of Al-Wasl Football Club, in a momentous development that will see the football legend lead the team for the next two seasons," the club said in a statement.

An Emirati man is being sued for a whopping $12 million dollars for failing to have sex with his wife and causing her mental anguish, a report said Wednesday.

The unidentified woman told the court that her Emirati husband did not sleep with her in the first four months of their marriage in 2008 and later she discovered that he suffered from erectile dysfunction, Gulf News said.

Emirati authorities are pushing ahead with plans to impose tighter government restrictions on the most secure BlackBerry service next week, according to the CEO of one of the Gulf nation's phone companies.

But Osman Sultan, chief executive of the telecommunications firm Du, told reporters Monday he doesn't expect the shift May 1 to cause problems for customers, who will still have access to email, Web browsing and messaging services.

An Ethiopian maid struck back at her allegedly abusive employer in Dubai, slicing off the Emirati man's penis in response to harassment, the 7DAYS daily on Wednesday quoted the emirate's police as saying.

Police responded to a call from the man and "found him bleeding badly. His housemaid had chopped off his private parts using a knife", 7DAYS quoted a Dubai police official as saying of the attack on Monday.

Vanity Fair has stirred controversy with an article panning the Gulf city state of Dubai, which has pumped millions into cultivating an image of high glamor.

The iconic magazine's April edition is on sale in bookshops but with the three pages of the column headlined "Dubai on Empty" neatly removed, although a page of photos has escaped the guillotine.

Dubai police have foiled a bid to smuggle 16,000 guns from Turkey to Yemen's northern province of Saada, the stronghold of Shiite rebels, the Gulf emirate's police chief said on Thursday.

Six Arab residents of the United Arab Emirates of which Dubai is a member have been arrested as "police foiled a major attempt to smuggle arms from Turkey to Yemen," Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan told a press conference.

A Boeing Emirates 777 traveling from Dubai to New York with 361 passengers on board made an emergency landing in Stockholm early Monday after smoke was detected in the cabin, an airport spokesman said.

"They had an indication of smoke in the cabin ... It could have been someone smoking in the toilets," Anders Bredfell of Stockholm's Arlanda airport told Agence France Presse.

Dubai's leading property develop, Emaar, said Thursday it has raised $500 million through an offering international bonds aimed mainly at refinancing debt, raising hopes for eased finance for Dubai firms.

The company behind the building of the world's tallest tower, Burj Khalifa, said its first international fixed-income offering, in the form of sukuks, or Islamic bonds, was "very well received."