The quake, which measured 6.1 on the Richter scale, struck near Bandar Abbas, while tremors registered in the UAE measured 4.8, according to news reports.

Iraqi blogger Attawie, who lives in Abu Dhabi, sets the scene:

I was checking my email yesterday around 3 PM when I felt really dizzy. For someone fasting during Ramadan this is not a good news. It means you're not having the right portion of food to keep you healthy. But I remember very well that I had biryanee (rice with biryanee spices and vegetables), roasted piece of chicken, salad and a piece of cake with dried figs for desert. I can't be hungry this soon!

With closed eyes I was still feeling dizzy. Not a good idea to stand up, I looked right and there it was. The stuffed tiger with long dangling hands and legs was swinging right and left. It can't be the AC that made it move because if it was so then the shelves he was hanging on should not move too! Oh my God! An earthquake.

I ran to the next room where my father was helping my sister to hang her new shelves. I told them that there's an earth quake and I'm feeling dizzy. So they'd better change. We have to leave the building. A moment of silence there was and I said it's true look at the chandlers, they are swinging.

The earthquake was still there, the chandlers were still going left right and left, I put some important stuff in my handbag and told dad to bring the case of our important documents.

Seabee, from Dubai, says he felt nothing.

I was in Dubai Marina at the time and felt nothing. Mrs Seabee said her office building in Knowledge Village trembled slightly, but that's only three storeys high.

Many people are relating their experience of it to the media, but not the ones I'd like to hear from - the guys in the cranes above the world's tallest building Burj Dubai.

From Kuwait, Lebanese Fonzy posts a video, which shows people on the streets after evacuating their buildings:

Fonzy further explains:

These tremors are from a 6.2 quake that hit Iran and spread to Dubai. The aftershock measured 4.8 on the Richter scale. Buildings all along Sheikh Zayed Road were evacuated after the tremor struck at around 3.00pm, with crowds of confused people flooding out into the street. Buildings were actually swaying from side to side.

And Teachthemasses's School Days asks:

Did the Earth move for you?

The UAE Community Blog also features an exchange between bloggers and their readers about what happened.

The Lady asks:

Anybody felt any mild tremors today at around 3:05pm?

And hallodubai replies:

yes i did! our building was shaking!!!

Extinct adds:

I don't know about buildings swaying but my bed definitely moved!

But for Josh of Arabia, who was in Sharjah, there was more important business to attend to:

oh yeah, i was eating in the sofa and it moves..then our windchimes made sounds too..half of the people in our building in sharjah went down fast, but i rather go ahead eating..

i got lot of calls after..

Writing at Egyptian Chronicles, Zeinobia has the scoop. She says:

I got unconfirmed news through Twitter earlier today that the General prosecutor accused officially Hisham Talaat Mustafa of Incitement to murder of Suzan Tamim.
Then the news was confirmed according to BBC Arabic , in fact today was not only the accusation day but the arrest day of Hisham Talaat Mustafa himself. Here is the news from Masrawy.com too. “Both news are in Arabic”
Hisham Talaat Mustafa was arrested today in Cairo.
His empire or rather his father empire Talaat Mustafa group “TMG”had an immediate board of directors meeting and his brother Tarek was appointed as the new CEO instead of his brother.
TMG stocks in the Egyptian Stock Market surely did not go up to the sky after the thrilling news , it went down 16% of its face value , already I expect that they will go down more and more tomorrow because the news was not announced as expected today.

Zeinobia provides the businessman's profile here.

Elijah Zarwan, writing at The Skeptic, shares more news. He writes:

Yesterday police arrested Egyptian billionaire Hisham Talaat Mustafa, former chair of one of the country’s largest real-estate development firms and a representative of the ruling party in the upper house of Parliament, on charges that he paid $2 million to have Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim murdered in Dubai. A earlier ban on reporting any connection between Mustafa and the murder had suggested that the government might stand by Mustafa, who has good connections with the president’s son, Gamal. Apparently not.

Reuters’ Aziz al-Kaissouni is filing updates about the effects on the stock market. And Heba Saleh covers the political angle in article for the Financial Times.

And while on the theme of scandals and high rollers being at the wrong side of the law, Zeinobia has more news:

Mohamed Farid Khamis ,the big tycoon of oriental weavers , the famous NDP , Policies Committee member and the Shura Council member is facing bribe charges !!

It seems the famous old businessman bribed a judge  and from here he was caught red handed through mediums who confessed in front of the general prosecutor.

You do not know anything about because there was a publication ban issued by the G.P as usual ,do not forget Khamis is very strong businessman.

Teach the Masses, blogging from Kuwait, posts more details on Tamim's brutal murder. She writes:

Tamim had a rather chequered past, married twice and even herself named in a plot to kill her second husband. She had been having an affair with Mustafa ( whose family practically ‘own’ Sharm Al Sheikh ) and this was broken off about three months ago. It seems she then high tailed it to London, before heading off to Dubai. Unfortunately love spurned Mustafa trailed her to Dubai and paid an ex policeman a whopping $2M to kill her. This he did by cutting her throat.

Writing in Egyptian Wish, the blogger quotes part of an article published in Aljazeera.net, by Mohamed El Sayed Ahmed which says:

The official Tunisia.com blog congratulated Mellouli on taking home Tunisia's first gold medal in 40 years:

Congratulations to Oussama Mellouli who dug in when it counted to beat the legendary Grant Hackett over the 1500 meters swim in the games.

In what is a tough event Oussama beat the odds and delivered the first gold for over 40 years!

Algeria.com details Algeria's Olympic history, shares the stats so far, and gives a bit of encouragement:

It is hoped that between the track athletes and the boxers that Algeria will be able to add a few more medals to their collection, and walk away from another successful Olympic Games. Algeria has shown their ability to be worthy competitors and it seems that every year they are growing in strength and diversity.

Morocco's The View from Fez shared the exciting news of Hasna Benhassi's bronze medal, Morocco's first in Beijing, praising the runner for her success:

Benhassi was already among the greatest Moroccan women athletes in history even before her silver medal 800m performances in the Athens Olympics and the World Championships in Helsinki in 2005 and Osaka in 2007. She had won gold at 800m in the 2000 African Championships and at 1500m in the 2001 World Indoor Championships in Lisbon, becoming only the second female Moroccan athlete, after Nezha Bidouane, to win a World Championship title. But she has remained very much in the shadow of her brilliant compatriot, Hicham El Guerrouj.

Although Libya has not yet won a medal, its bloggers have been talking about the Olympics. Anglo-Libyan blogged the opening ceremonies and discussed swimmer Asmahan (Mercedes) Farhat's first race:

Yesterday I watched the swimming heats on BBC but they never showed the 100-meter breaststroke that Asmahan Farhat took part in, the picture on the left is Asmahan getting ready for her swim, she did not do that well although she did manage to break her own record but she enjoyed taking part, you can read her blog entry, it was funny reading how she was dressed in an east Libyan costume by old ladies, to me this is the best and most beautiful Libyan costume.

Farhat, a Libyan-American competing for Libya, wrote a blog post for her local U.S. newspaper about participating in the Olympics, and said this about getting to warm up in the same lane as Michael Phelps:

During warm up I got to swim in his lane. That's right, right next to him and I will honestly say that nothing makes you swim faster than when Michael Phelps is swimming behind you and you don't want to get in his way!

When he swims past you, you can feel the power that he pushes the water with and how smooth he moves in the water. Most swimmers I've swam in a lane with you can feel them fighting the water and the waves are choppy, but when he swims next to you there are barely any forceful waves.

It is unbelievable, it's almost like the waters moving with him. It was the most memorable warm-up swim I've ever swam for sure!

Although bloggers are proud of what their countrymen have accomplished, one blogger feels that Arab countries could do more. Musings of a Proud Arab posted on the eighth Olympic day, frustrated by the lack of Arab medalists. The Jordanian blogger, who lives in the UAE, encourages Arab countries to unite for the gold:

We should not be there just to participate for our national flags to fly within the Olympic Village and in the Parade of Nations. This got me thinking and I want to share a solution with you; have ALL of the 22 Arab countries contribute half of their budgets to a collective consolidated budget that will be used as a Regional Trial to choose the BEST ARAB ATHLETES and train them to bring us gold.There are several reasons for this; 1) the Arab common person is united in their support of Arabs in the Olympics as it reflects on all of us (where we are really united), 2) it allows the countries to still have their symbolic participation in the Olympics (with half their budget), and 3) it will derive the athletes of the poor excuse that I did not perform because I did not have the support, especially financial from my National Olympic Committee.After all, the Arab countries combined have the same population of the United States. And we never hear complaints from them that on there are too many Californians with their Olympic athletes and not a single Alaskan!So, will this be an ideal or can the League of Arab States seriously work on achieving it from 2009? As a corporate person, I would place 12 gold medals as our target for 2012 London Olympics!