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MOH confirms Saudi Arabia’s 31st coronavirus case

Arab News | 5.18.13

Another case of novel coronavirus infection in the eastern part of the kingdom was confirmed by the Ministry of Health on Saturday."One case of coronavirus has been recorded in the Eastern region, and he is now under the medical health care ... Continue Reading receiving the proper treatment," the MOH said in a brief statement posted on its website.The new discovery brings to 31 the total number of coronavirus infections in the Kingdom, mostly in the eastern town of Al-Ahsa, since the SARS-like virus first emerged in September 2012.Known as novel coronavirus, or nCoV, the new virus is from the same family as those that cause common colds and the one that caused the deadly outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that emerged in Asia in 2003. Most of the infections were in Al-Ahsa and a few were reported in Jeddah and Riyadh, said the MOH.Last week, the MOH and World Health Organization (WHO) said 15 of the nCov victims in Saudi Arabia have died.WHO said it had been informed of a total of 40 laboratory-confirmed cases worldwide, including 20 deaths. hide

Saudi woman makes history by reaching Everest summit

BBC News | 5.18.13

A Saudi woman has made history by reaching the summit of the world's highest mountain. Raha Moharrak, 25, not only became the first Saudi woman to attempt the climb but also the youngest Arab to make it to the top of Everest. She is part ... Continue Reading of a four-person expedition that also includes the first Qatari man and the first Palestinian man attempting to reach the summit. They are trying to raise $1m (660,000) for education projects in Nepal. hide

Syrian Oil Becomes Fault Line In War

Al-Monitor | Andrea Giloti | 5.18.13

The province of Hassakah is the Syrian oil tank. Before the revolution, its 170,000 barrels per day accounted for more than half of the country's oil production, thus representing the backbone of those oil exports covering a third of national ... Continue Reading export revenues. Syrian oil engineers working in the province told Al-Monitor that the Democratic Union Party (PYD) -- affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) -- currently controls around 60% of the oil fields, leaving the remaining 40% in the hands of several factions of the Arab opposition. Since the conflict engulfed the route of the pipelines to the refineries, however, the drills have stopped working. hide

Embassy Threats Grow in Mideast

Wall Street Journal | Siobhan Gorman | 5.17.2013

The U.S. is seeing a spike in al Qaeda-related terror plots and threats against its embassies in Libya, Yemen and Egypt, say current and former U.S. officials citing domestic and foreign intelligence reports. The threats against U.S. missions ... Continue Reading in Tripoli and Yemen\'s capital, Sana\'a, are believed to involve bomb plots by Sunni extremists and perhaps al Qaeda-linked individuals, and have set off alarms among U.S. officials still shaken by last September\'s attack on a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. hide

Reliving the 70′s: Egypt’s Golden Age of Rock

Discord Magazine | 5.18.13

By the mid 1980s, the greats had already moved on: Hussein El Emam and Ezzat Abou Ouf turned to acting; Omar Khayrat became a classical music legend, leaving his drums behind to take up the piano; Moody El Emam and Hesham Nour focused on ... Continue Reading composing and producing music for films, television serials and cartoons; Sheriff Nour, still composes music, but continued his dream of live performance with Mounir; Hany Shenouda remained with Al Masriyeen till today, playing small shows to an even smaller audience; Ahmed Ezz (who was a great drummer by all accounts) turned towards business and eventually politics, currently residing in Torah prison; and Omar Khorchid, Ismail al Hakim, and Talaat Zein passed away, leaving  us with only their legendary music. hide

May 17th, 2013 Edition

Saudis 4th largest group of foreign students in US

Arab News | Fadia Jiffry | 5.17.13

2012, making it the fourth largest provider of foreign students to US colleges after China, India and South Korea, according to the most recent annual report by the Institute of International Education.During 2010-2011, the number of students ... Continue Reading sent to US colleges increased by 11,435 students from the previous year. There are currently about 70,000 Saudi students in American universities. The number is expected to rise.International student enrollment at US colleges has risen in recent years, with a record of 764,495 foreign students attending colleges the US in 2011-2012. hide

Futuristic metro station planned for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Images

Design Boom | 5.17.13

zaha hadid's winning entry for one of the riyadh metro stations sports a lattice-like undulating skin--a sequence of opposing sine-waves--and will purportedly enclose a stop at the intersection of the high street/ batha line and the abdul rahman ... Continue Reading bin auf/ sheik hassan bin hussein line. the in-progress rapid transit system is part of major redevelopment bordering the king abdullah financial district, itself a burgeoning area in riyadh, the capital of saudi arabia. serving as key interchange for the new riyadh metro network for line 1, as well as the terminus of line 4 (for those traveling to the airport) and line 6, the king abdullah financial district (KAFD) metro line will have six platforms, over four public floors, and house two levels of underground parking. connectivity diagrams and traffic maps have been analyzed and circulation paths have been optimizedfor optimal pedestrian flow. these paths of movement helped dictate the configuration of the three-dimensional lattice with rhythmic sculpted curves. themselves generated from the frequency variation of daily traffic flows. the architecture makes manifest the very forces it is set to mediate.  the urban fabric is set to become a prime area for distinct architectural projects with norwegian firm snohetta and german firm gerber architekten slated to complete two other metro stations along the same six-line, 174 km long public transport spine. construction will reportedly begin this summer and complete by 2017.  hide

Saudi regulations target stock market speculators

Arab News/Reuters | 5.17.13

A drive for tighter regulation of Saudi Arabia\'s stock market may help to break the hold of short-term speculators on share prices, making the market more attractive to local and foreign institutional investors.This week the Capital Market ... Continue Reading Authority, operating under a new chairman, announced a series of measures designed to reduce the volatility of shares, make them harder to manipulate and improve the quality of listed companies.Authorities have tried in the past to lift the market\'s tone, with limited success. Currently over 90 percent of daily trading on the Arab world\'s biggest stock market, which has a capitalization of about $ 400 billion, is conducted by retail investors rather than institutions, officials say. hide

Major Saudi firms in Forbes Top 500 list

Arab News | 5.17.13

Major Saudi firms in Forbes Top 500 list With the support of Sheikh Nahyan Mabarak Al Nahyan, the UAE's minister for culture, youth and community development, Forbes Middle East hosted a prestigious event at Ritz Carlton, Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, in recognition of The Top 500 Companies in ... Continue Reading the Arab World and The Top 100 Making an Impact.The event, which included an exclusive award ceremony and gala dinner, was attended by senior government officials, top executives from various business sectors, and an array of other high profile guests. The event was also graced by the presence of Nasser bin Aqeel Al-Tayyar, president of Arab Publisher House, who welcomed Sheikh Nahayan along with other dignitaries.Delivering a keynote speech on the occasion was Sam Alkharrat, managing director of SAP Middle East and North Africa. "A perfect storm of cutting-edge technology is transforming MENA's business landscape," Alkharrat said. hide

Saudi Arabia’s illegal expat exodus set to start

Arabian Business | Courtney Trenwith | 5.17.13

An exodus of illegal expats in Saudi Arabia is expected to begin on Saturday as part of the kingdom's amnesty aimed at ridding it of black market workers, according to local media.Saudi Arabia has given illegal foreign workers a three-month ... Continue Reading grace period to legalize their status, after panic over reported mass deportations. hide

Medina concession could to lead to more airport privatisations in Saudi Arabia

Airport World | Joe Bates | 5.17.13

Medina is the first Saudi airport to be fully privatised, and Youssef points out that the consortium must be doing something right as Project Finance International (PFI), a Thomson Reuters publication, recently named the Medina project as the ... Continue Reading ‘Middle East and Africa Infrastructure Deal of the Year’. Youssef believes that the highlights of the project are very simple and straightforward – it is the first airport privatisation project in the region and is technically a BOT project, although because the deal has been funded by Islamic financing, the term doesn’t really apply. hide

Saudi Arabia expands labs to track deadly coronavirus

CBC News/AP | 5.16.2013

Saudi Arabia says it has dedicated nine additional laboratories to help investigators track a deadly new respiratory virus related to SARS that appears to be centred in the kingdom. Thursday's Health Ministry announcement follows its report ... Continue Reading that two health care workers became ill this month after being exposed to patients with the virus. Experts are closely studying whether it can spread easily from person to person. hide

Saudi’s Mobily denies asking for help to spy on customers

Al Arabiya | Reuters | 5.16.13

Saudi Arabia's No. 2 telecom operator Mobily denied claims by a software engineer that the company had asked him to build surveillance tools to intercept customers' messages on Twitter and other services.Matthew Rosenfield, who uses the ... Continue Reading pseudonym Moxie Marlinspike, published emails on his blog purporting to be from Mobily which included a request for help in intercepting traffic over applications such as Twitter, Whatsapp, Viber and Line.Marlinspike said the company wanted to be able to monitor or block mobile data on these applications and that Mobily had provided him with design documents to produce computer code - known as SSL certificates - that the company could use for interception.Marlinspike said on the blog he declined to help. hide

Shell to Start Iraq Oil Output Amid Plans for Saudi Investments

Bloomberg | 5.17.13

Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) will start producing crude at Iraq's Majnoon oil field as early as next month and plans to increase energy investments in Saudi Arabia, its regional vice president said.Output from Majnoon, one of Iraq's largest oil ... Continue Reading fields, will start "around mid-year" and increase to 175,000 barrels a day by the end of 2013, Mounir Bouaziz said in an e-mailed response to questions. In Saudi Arabia, Shell is holding talks with officials on a project to develop natural gas from the kingdom's Kidan field in the Rub al-Khali, or Empty Quarter, he said. hide

More sports centers for young Saudis, says Prince Nawaf

Saudi Gazette | 5.16.13

President of Youth Welfare Prince Nawaf Bin Faisal Bin Fahd called for hundreds of new district sports centers to be established in various cities of Saudi Arabia to keep children off the streets, encourage youths to avoid anti-social behavior ... Continue Reading and even help train future Saudi sports stars. Addressing Saudi businessmen and sports figures at the Districts Sports Forum held on Tuesday night at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Prince Nawaf said: "(The centers) will make it possible to get young people involved in sport and make sports and social facilities accessible to the public. "It will also facilitate efforts to scout for talented youngsters with the potential to become champions in the future." hide

Saudi says prisons are overcrowded

Emirates 247 | 5.16.13

Prisons in Saudi Arabia have become largely overcrowded because of an increase in the number of offenders and a delay in the release of inmates whose jail terms have expired, the Kingdom's prisons department chief has said. The number of ... Continue Reading prisoners at the central jails in the capital Riyadh and the western Saudi towns of Makkah and Jeddah is now nearly three times the capacity of those prisons, Major General Ali Al Harthi told Sabq newspaper. hide

A revealing map of the world’s most and least ethnically diverse countries

Washington Post | Max Fisher | 5.16.2013

I've mapped out the results above. The greener countries are more ethnically diverse and the orange countries more homogenous. There are a few trends you can see right away: countries in Europe and Northeast Asia tend to be the most homogenous, ... Continue Reading sub-Saharan African nations the most diverse. The Americas are generally somewhere in the middle. And richer countries appear more likely to be homogenous.This map is particularly interesting viewed alongside data we examined yesterday on racial tolerance, as measured by the frequency with which people in certain countries said they would not want a neighbor from a different racial group. hide

Commentary: Back to the Future in Iran’s Election

The National Interest | Sahar Namazikhah and Reza Marashi | 5.17.13

As the field of candidates for Iran's presidential election takes shape, the most intriguing entry into the race is Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. His candidacy is a threat to all other candidates--and more critically, it presents a major ... Continue Reading challenge to Iran's most powerful man, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Despite the generational changes that have shaped the Iranian system in recent years, Rafsanjani's challenge to Khamenei may take this election back to the future. hide

Sectarianism in Iraq stoked by Syrian war

Washington Post | Abigail Hauslohner | 5.16.2013

A recent tide of sectarian tensions that erupted into the worst violence seen in Iraq in five years is testing the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose ability to contain the crisis could hinge on a conflict raging beyond his ... Continue Reading control in Syria. The prospect of a regional power shift driven by the bloody civil war next door, where a mostly Sunni rebel movement is struggling to topple the Shiite-dominated regime, has emboldened Iraq's Sunni minority to challenge its own Shiite government and amplified fears within Maliki's administration that Iraq may soon be swept up in a spillover war. hide

Russia Provides Syria With Advanced Missiles

New York Times | Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt | 5.16.2013

Russia has previously provided a version of the missiles, called Yakhonts, to Syria. But those delivered recently are outfitted with an advanced radar that makes them more effective, according to American officials who are familiar with ... Continue Reading classified intelligence reports and would only discuss the shipment on the basis of anonymity. Unlike Scud and other longer-range surface-to-surface missiles that the Assad government has used against opposition forces, the Yakhont antiship missile system provides the Syrian military a formidable weapon to counter any effort by international forces to reinforce Syrian opposition fighters by imposing a naval embargo, establishing a no-fly zone or carrying out limited airstrikes. hide

Fracking envy

Smart Planet | Chris Nelder | 5.15.2013

For the past two weeks I've been in the UK, where the talk about shale gas has been all the rage since the ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) was lifted by the government in December. The ban was imposed in 2011, after the fracking of ... Continue Reading Britain's first shale gas well was blamed for two small earthquakes and gas contamination of groundwater. More than 500 articles have been published about UK shale gas this year, according to my quick Google search. So it must be a really big deal, right? With massive proved reserves, and all that stuff? Actually, no. So far, only two exploratory wells have been drilled, both by Cuadrilla Resources in the Bowland shale gas play, which is in the Lancashire area in UK's northwest. The first well, in Preese Hall, Weeton, was fracked. The second, in Grange Hill, Singleton, was drilled but not fracked. hide

The largest container ships ever will start chugging this year—but it’s going to cause a shake-up

Quartz | Simone Foxman | 5.06.2013

Having such capacity may be good for Maersk in the longer term, but in the immediate future it may not much help the company and certainly not the shipping industry as a whole. The world’s waterways are already overloaded with ships ordered in a ... Continue Reading frenzy before the financial crisis, but in the absence of the kind of growth that accompanied the bubble. An oversupplied market has translated into low shipping rates. The route that’s been hit worst of all by the global slowdown? Asia-Europe. With Europe sinking into recession and Asia no longer as dependent upon high-wealth European consumers, it’s unclear exactly when the once-vibrant route will need the kind of shipping traffic that it has. Maersk’s new behemoths clearly don’t help the cause. hide
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