The human race has played games since time immemorial. This week’s issue of Time magazine has looked deeply at sports and other games that bring people "togetherness" and help young ones in various countries transform their lives.

A fine read for those among us who make football and chess a passion.

Another superb read for me however, was a tiny little paper back that I had read with interest at age 25 and picked up again at the threshold of age 50 to re-read and get a clearer, different perspective.

On Monday June 16, the UK Foreign Office issued a travel advisory raising the terror threat level in the UAE to "high".

On Tuesday June 17, the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi put out a warden message warning all Americans about the threat of terrorist attacks as the summer approaches.

Neither the UK Foreign Office nor the US Embassy mentioned a specific threat, but warned of the "general security situation in the Middle East".

For a long time now naysayers from around the world – but mostly from the West – have said that young people don’t read anymore and the written word is dying because of TV, the internet and the cryptic SMS (short message service) culture.

Everywhere I looked I saw signs of the opposite and I’ve often wondered if someone from the TV and internet industry actually started the rumour of the demise of books and newspapers to fuel their own businesses.

Well, I’m not worrying about that anymore because I’ve found out that the love of books by young people never really went away.

In the United States of America the oldest ever presidential nominee and the first black presidential nominee will be going head to head to become the 44th president of that country.

The path to the White House of both Senators, John McCain and Barack Obama, is paved with rocks.

The two are very different and that is very obvious. The only similarity they might have is that both favour the privatisation of healthcare and then it stops.