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		</div><p>The Middle East’s first World Fair featuring 192 nations has begun in Dubai with a spectacular opening ceremony.</p>
<p>Named Expo 2020, the event was postponed by a year due to the outbreak of the coronavirus last year.</p>
<p>While that could have an impact on how many people flock to the United Arab Emirates, the six-month-long exhibition offers Dubai a momentous opportunity to showcase its East-meets-West appeal as a place where all are welcome for business.</p>
<p>Not long ago, the site of the 1,080 acre expo was barren desert.</p>
<p>Less than a decade later, it is a futuristic landscape with a centerpiece dome, marketed as the world’s largest 360-degree projection screen, robots, a new metro station, multimillion-dollar pavilions and districts with names like “sustainability” and “opportunity” — all built, like much of the Gulf, by low-paid migrant workers.</p>
<p>Organisers say 192 nations are represented at the expo.</p>
<p>The US pavilion showcases a replica of the Space X Falcon 9 rocket while Italy’s pavilion houses a 3D replica of Michelangelo’s biblical hero, David, that is 17ft high.</p>
<p>Other attractions include an African food hall, a royal Egyptian mummy, concerts and performances from around the world, and the option to dine on a 500 dollar three-course meal with glow-in-the-dark cuisine.<br />
Since first making a splash in London in 1851, world fairs have long been an opportunity for nations to meet, exchange ideas, showcase inventions, promote culture and build business ties.</p>
<p>For more than a century, these global exhibitions have captured the imagination and showcased some of humanity’s most important innovations.</p>
<p>The first World Fair held in the United States in 1876 debuted Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, the typewriter, a mechanical calculator and Heinz Ketchup.</p>
<p>Held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that fair attracted nearly 10 million people at a time when the entire US population was estimated to be just 40 million. One of its main buildings, Memorial Hall, is now a museum.</p>
<p>Other fairs showcased inventions like the sewing machine, the elevator, carbonated soda, the Ferris wheel and, in 1939 in New York, the television.</p>
<p>This year’s expo is happening amid a global pandemic, when untold numbers are still working and studying remotely — and connecting to the world virtually.</p>
<p>It is unclear how many visitors Dubai can attract, and how much the expo will stimulate its tourism-driven economy.<br />
<img src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/view-of-aeroplanes-parking-berth-at-dubai-international-news-photo-183676327-1550251563.jpg" alt="Planes collide in Dubai Airport" width="594" height="384" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-169402" /><br />
To enter the expo site, visitors will need to show a negative PCR test or proof of Covid-19 vaccination.</p>
<p>Dubai’s ruler and the force behind the emirate’s transformation, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, said Expo 2020 is a chance to showcase the best of human excellence.</p>
<p>“It offers a platform to forge a united worldwide effort to build a more sustainable and prosperous future for all of mankind,” he told guests at the expo’s opening ceremony on Thursday night.</p>
<p>Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince and de-facto ruler of the UAE’s seat of power, Abu Dhabi, used his speech to emphasise “the ethos of this land” as a meeting point for cultures and tolerance.</p>
<p>However, Human Rights Watch said organisers are promoting an inaccurate image of the UAE as an “open and tolerant country” for public relations purposes.</p>
<p>Instead, it said in a scathing report that “abusive authorities forcefully bar all peaceful criticism and dissent” in the country, jailing activists and carrying out pervasive domestic surveillance programmes.</p>
<p>“The UAE has embarked on a decades-long effort to whitewash its reputation on the international stage,” the rights group said.</p>
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