Amid the massive construction and development drive under way in Dubai that is bringing in each year tens of thousands of expatriates and Asian labourers, and aims to attract 15-million tourists by 2010, a large number of the small native population have resettled on the city’s fringes to preserve cherished tribal and family values.
About a dozen veiled women, some with only their eyes visible, stare at a large flat screen flashing stock prices inside a female-only dealing room at the Dubai bourse.
Motivated by a desire to make some quick money, share their husbands’ passion for stocks or simply fill in time, many housewives in the United Arab Emirates have been lured into a bubbling stock market over the past year.
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/ 14 February 2006
Young Saudis defied on Tuesday the ultra-conservative kingdom’s ban on Valentine’s Day celebrations to exchange sweets, red teddy bears, greeting cards, roses and even kisses. On the night before Valentine’s young men and women strolled up and down the Tahliya shopping avenue in the western city of Jeddah, browsing at heart-shaped chocolate boxes and the red lingerie.
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/ 13 January 2006
Stricken families were hunting for their loved ones on Friday after a stampede that killed 362 Muslims at the annual hajj — a disaster Saudi authorities have blamed on unruly pilgrims. Weeping in front of a wall of pictures of dead pilgrims, families continued to seek news of missing relatives at the morgue in Mina, where the stampede took place.
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/ 13 January 2006
At least 345 Muslim pilgrims were trampled to death on Thursday as they tripped over luggage in a scramble to hurl pebbles at symbols of Satan during the annual pilgrimage, Saudi officials said. It was the latest in a succession of stampede tragedies to hit the hajj pilgrimage despite efforts by Saudi authorities to avoid a repeat of disasters like the one that killed 1Â 426 people in 1990.
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/ 4 November 2004
United States war planes hammered suspected rebel positions in the Iraqi city of Fallujah early on Thursday, with some Iraqis believing US President George Bush’s election victory gives him full licence to quash the insurgency. Thousands of families have already fled the rebel city, 50km west of Baghdad.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-InternationalNews&ao=124936">Saddam prosecution could be foiled</a>