- Old Coast, New Coast: Doha, Qatar (hakaimagazine.com)
In the Neolithic, 10,000 years ago, this entire shore would have been underwater. At that time, the coastline was two meters higher. This wet period brought the first known occupation of Qatar and archaeologists occasionally find the dark brown rock tools of the people who took advantage of this brief climactic window—and the concurrent flourishing of life—to spread across Arabia.
- World Report 2024: Qatar (hrw.org)
Qatar hosted the 2022 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup between November and December 2022. Qatari authorities and FIFA failed to provide compensation to migrant workers for widespread abuses, including wage theft and the unexplained deaths of workers who prepared and delivered the tournament. Migrant workers faced new forms of exploitation, highlighting the inadequacies of Qatar’s labor reforms and the shameful human rights legacy of the 2022 World Cup. Qatari laws also continue to discriminate against women due to abusive male guardianship policies and against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals.
- Discworld (Wikipedia)
Discworld is a comic fantasy book series written by the English author Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat planet balanced on the backs of four elephants which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle. The series began in 1983 with The Colour of Magic and continued until the final novel The Shepherd’s Crown, which was published in 2015, following Pratchett’s death. The books frequently parody or take inspiration from classic works, usually fantasy or science fiction, as well as mythology, folklore and fairy tales, and often use them for satirical parallels with cultural, political and scientific issues.
- Qatar (Wikipedia)
Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a country in West Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it shares its sole land border with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its territory surrounded by the Persian Gulf. The Gulf of Bahrain, an inlet of the Persian Gulf, separates Qatar from nearby Bahrain. The capital is Doha, home to over 80% of the country’s inhabitants, and the land area is mostly made up of flat, low-lying desert.
