Something happened around dawn Friday at the Fakkah oilfield that straddles Iraq and Iran.

But pinning down the extent of an apparent cross-border incident by Iranian forces was no easy task.

Here's what those in charge had to say, with the responses summarized, paraphrased or interpreted:

One camp of Iraqi officials: Iranians stormed across the border in tanks, dug trenches and raised the Iranian flag on Iraqi soil.

Another camp of Iraqi officials: Three Iranian soldiers crossed into the Iraqi part of the oilfield, stayed a few minutes and then left without explanation or incident.

Iranian Embassy in Baghdad: No such incident ever happened and it's the media spreading rumors.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki: Called an emergency meeting of his top security advisers.

Iraqi foreign ministry: It happened. How big a deal? Dunno.

Iraqi interior ministry: We don't know what happened. We're investigating and will release a statement.

US military at midday: It happened, but it happens all the time and it's no biggie.

US military in the evening: We are not in charge anymore, so please direct all queries to the Iraqi government.

Maysan Provincial Council member No. 1: It happened and it's a travesty and it's all the Americans' fault for leaving our borders so vulnerable.

Maysan Provincial Council member No. 2: It happened, it was weird, but let's not get carried away.

Clear now? Good.

I flew into Baghdad today from Beirut on Lebanon's Middle East Airlines. I sat next to a middle-aged Kurdish woman returning from a training workshop in Tunisia.

My Kurdish seatmate (who speaks fluent English, Arabic, Kurdish as well as, inexplicably, Dutch and Polish) was chatting with me about how much nicer MEA is than Iraqi Airways, which I usually take but didn't this time because of a scheduling conflict. The Lebanese planes are so much better maintained, so much cleaner, better food, in-seat videos, excellent service. The Kurdish woman then made some really technical remarks about the models of planes each airlines uses.

"How do you know all that?" I asked.

"I used to work for Iraqi Airways," she said. A wistful look came over her face.

"I saw Paris and London and New York. Even when our planes were grounded, we traveled to Jordan to do some maintenance on the ones stuck there at the airport," she continued.

"You can't go back to Iraqi Airways now?" I asked.

She laughed.

"Oh, no, no, no," she said. "It's not for everybody anymore. You have to know this person or that person, somebody important. The ministers take only their friends."

We sipped tea out of our little plastic cups and gazed out the window as we neared Baghdad. The verdant hills and sparkling sea we saw as we departed Beirut gave way to huge expanses of desert.

"Very different from Lebanon, no?" the Kurdish woman said.

"Yes, but the palm trees are beautiful," I said, trying to be diplomatic.

She was silent. We landed and taxied down the runway until we came to a stop next to a mysterious-looking plane that had no airline insignia on it, just a curlicue "M" in green.

"Which airline is that?" I asked my seatmate.

"Hmm, I don't know," she said.

We whispered that maybe the M was for Maliki, and this was the infamous private plane the Iranians gave the Iraqi prime minister for official business. Bugging devices included, presumably.

"Or maybe it's M for ministers," my seatmate said, referring to Iraq's notoriously corrupt Cabinet. "They already took the houses, the government, the country. Why not planes?"

Zahi Hawass, the always quotable head of Egyptian Antiquities, offered a new zinger this week in his efforts to get the British Museum to return the Rosetta Stone, the basalt slab that was crucial to the modern deciphering of heiroglyphics.

The British Museum is considering a request to at least loan the famous artifact to Egypt, though there are concerns about its security and guaranteed return.

"We are not pirates of the Caribbean. We are a civilized country. If I sign something, I will do it," Hawass told the BBC "We have the right for our monuments to be shown." Full story here.

Hawass' emphasis on showmanship over scholarship infuriates a lot of people, both Egyptians and expats alike, but nobody can deny he's devoted to forcing the return of Egypt's ancient artifacts from European countries that "acquired" them through pretty dubious circumstances: colonial rule, archaeologists, tomb raiders, etc.

The Rosetta Stone, for example, was discovered in Egypt by French soldiers in 1799 and given to the British under a treaty two years later. The stone dates back to 196 BC.

The BBC says an Egyptian delegation went to the Louvre Museum in Paris last month to collect five ancient fresco fragments that were stolen from a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in the 1980s. Hawass also has his eye on getting back a 3,500-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti, a statue of the architect of the Great Pyramid at Giza, a painted Zodiac from the Dendera temple and a statue of Ramses II.

The United States, Germany, France, Italy, Britain and other Western nations all have stolen Egyptian artifacts on display at museums.

According to a 1970 United Nations agreement, artifacts are the property of their country of origin and pieces smuggled out must be returned, the BBC report said.

The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, an independent regional NGO, released a grim report today on the state of human rights in the Arab world. After studying a dozen countries in the region, the institute found a dramatic rollback of civil liberties and human rights in the past year, with similar violations from the Levant to the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa.

Common threads were torture, persecution of human rights activists, deterioration of press freedoms and discrimination against religious or ethnic minorities, according to the 230-page report. The title is "Bastion of Impunity, Mirage of Reform."

Here are some highlights as they appear in the report's executive summary:

Palestine
The report observes the grave and ongoing Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, particularly the collective punishment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip through the ongoing blockade and the brutal invasion of Gaza at the beginning of 2009 which resulted in the killing of more than 1,400 Palestinians, 83 percent of them civilians not taking part in hostilities.

Yemen
The deterioration in Yemeni affairs may presage the collapse of what remains of the central state structure due to policies that give priority to the monopolization of power and wealth, corruption that runs rampant, and a regime that continues to deal with opponents using solely military and security means. As such, Yemen is now the site of a war in the northern region of Saada, a bloody crackdown in the south, and social and political unrest throughout the country.

Sudan
The Sudanese regime is the exemplar for impunity and the lack of accountability. President Bashir has refused to appear before the International Criminal Court in connection with war crimes in Darfur. Instead, his regime is hunting down anyone in the country who openly rejects impunity for war crimes, imprisoning and torturing them and shutting down rights organizations.  Meanwhile the government’s policy of collective punishment against the population of Darfur continues,

Lebanon
In Lebanon, the threat of civil war that loomed last year has receded, but the country still suffers from an entrenched two-tier power structure in which Hizbullah’s superior military capabilities give the opposition an effective veto. As a result, the state’s constitutional institutions have been paralyzed. 

Iraq
Although Iraq is still the largest arena of violence and civilian deaths, it witnessed a relative improvement in some areas, though these gains remain fragile. The death toll has dropped and threats against journalists are less frequent. In addition, some of the major warring factions have indicated they are prepared to renounce violence and engage in the political process.

Egypt
In Egypt, as the state of emergency approaches the end of its third decade, the broad immunity given to the security apparatus has resulted in the killing of dozens of undocumented migrants, the use of lethal force in the pursuit of criminal suspects, and routine torture.  Other signs of deterioration were visible in 2009: the emergency law was applied broadly to repress freedom of expression, including detaining or abducting bloggers. 

Tunisia
In Tunisia, the authoritarian police state continued its unrestrained attacks on political activists, journalists, human rights defenders, trade unionists, and others involved in social protest. 

Algeria
In Algeria, the emergency law, the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, and the application of counterterrorism measures entrenched policies of impunity, grave police abuses, and the undermining of accountability and freedom of expression.

Morocco
Morocco, unfortunately, has seen a tangible erosion of the human rights gains achieved by Moroccans over the last decade. A fact most clearly seen in the failure if the government to adopt a set of institutional reforms within the security and judicial sectors intended to prevent impunity for crimes. Morocco’s relatively improved status was also undermined by the intolerance shown for freedom of expression, particularly for expression touching on the king or the royal family, or instances of institutional corruption.

Syria
As Syria entered its 47th year of emergency law, it continued to be distinguished by its readiness to destroy all manner of political opposition, even the most limited manifestations of independent expression. The Kurdish minority was kept in check by institutionalized discrimination, and human rights defenders were targets for successive attacks.

Bahrain
In Bahrain, the systematic discrimination against the Shiite majority was accompanied by more repression of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Human rights defenders increasingly became targets for arrest, trial, and smear campaigns. Some human rights defenders were even subjected by government agents to threats and intimidation while in Europe.

Saudi Arabia
In Saudi Arabia, the report notes that the Monarch’s speeches urging religious tolerance and interfaith dialogue abroad have not been applied inside the Kingdom, where the religious police continue to clamp down on personal freedom.  Indeed, repression of religious freedoms is endemic, and the Shiite minority continues to face systematic discrimination. Counterterrorism policies were used to justify long-term arbitrary detention, and political activists advocating reform were tortured.

Iranian students are staging anti-government protests today, managing to send photos and videos purportedly from the unrest despite the authorities' interruption of Internet and cell-phone lines to prevent the activists from communicating.

As of an hour or so ago, the official state news agencies didn't have anything on the demonstrations, which are reportedly erupting at several universities in Tehran and others in outlying provinces.

The few foreign reporters still in Tehran have been ordered to stay inside their offices for three days to bar them from coverage of the much-anticipated demonstrations to mark Students Day, the annual memorial for three students killed by the shah's forces in 1953.

Already, reports are emerging that Iranian security forces and basij militiamen have used tear gas and batons in clashes with students. Photos and video from today's events show cordoned-off campuses swarming with authorities.

It's hard to glean the size of the demonstrations or overall mood of the country today from the breathless, constantly updated Twitter and Facebook messages related to Students Day. But without official news or direct access to events, foreign media will have to rely on the government's non-statements and the unconfirmed, amateur video and accounts of protesters.

Far from ideal? Yes, but it's pretty much all the access we've had since the disputed Iranian elections in June.

You can follow the latest from Iran on Twitter, trending at #iranelection. This Gulf News page is collecting the tweets on Iran in case you don't have a Twitter account. And this blog has up-to-the-minute accounts of the unrest (though it's all impossible to independently verify).

Of course, there's still Payvand and all the other more famous Iranian portals you can find with a quick Google search. If you have other good information sources on Iran, please share.

Note: The above photo of Tehran University was posted on Twitter and has been picked up by several news services. I don't know the original source of the photo.

Perhaps the oddest part of Dubai's financial crisis is that everybody saw it coming. You couldn't sit in the world's grandest hotel, watch the construction of the world's tallest tower, or gape at the indoor ski slopes and behemoth shopping malls without feeling uneasy.

It all felt like too much, too fast. Even many of the Western expats who were lured there for the tax breaks and quick cash often described Dubai as the ultimate house of sand.

Dubai's bubble burst last week with the embarrassing (and market-shaking) announcement that the glitzy emirate's Dubai World development conglomerate had to delay payments on part of its $60 billion debt. Bloomberg quotes an economist as saying that Dubai's economy will take longer to recover from the financial crisis than other Gulf nations that also suffered as crude prices plummeted, international credit dried up and companies tried to refinance debt.

Almost two years ago, I reported a story from the UAE on how Abu Dhabi, the oil-rich capital emirate, was quietly pursuing a long-term development strategy that would position it as more sophisticated and responsible than Dubai.

Of course, people couldn't come out and say that -- Abu Dhabi officials chose their words very carefully when they told me how they didn't want "excess" and "erosion of local heritage." Put simply, they didn't want to be Dubai, although they wanted similar diversity of industry and worldwide renown.

The reluctance of observers to sound the alarm on Dubai was in large part because the eye-popping development was led and fueled by Dubai's emir, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. He detailed his philosophy behind the economic boom in a 2006 book, "My Vision: Challenges in the Race for Excellence."

Therefore, criticism of Dubai's unchecked growth was taboo, hitting too close to the royal family for the sources I interviewed. Even when I wrote a tongue-in-cheek blog post in which someone joked during rare showers in Dubai that rain wasn't in "Maktoum's Vision," a friend sent me a gentle warning to be careful when referencing the royals.

Now, however, angry investors and Dubai's newly unemployed want to hold someone accountable for all the money, and they're looking for answers as to how Dubai is going to climb out of this crisis. After a year or more of humiliating headlines about companies going bust, foreign laborers demonstrating and half-finished skyscrapers dotting the horizon, Dubai observers have become more outspoken in pinning the blame on Sheikh Maktoum's management.

Barbara Surk of the AP has a good story on that issue today. It contains some of the harshest criticism to date of Maktoum, who's reportedly retreated from the limelight, even telling the media to "shut up" in an uncharacteristic outburst in a recet meeting with international investors.

"It will be very difficult for Sheik Mohammed to survive this one," Christopher Davidson, an expert in Gulf affairs at Britain's Durham University and author of two books on the Emirates, told the AP. He said Mohammed misled investors by giving them the impression he had money to back his plans.