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/ 29 September 2009
Standing behind a wall of pearls and rosaries in a shop in Mecca, souvenir dealer Mohammad Hamdi says business has never been so bad.
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/ 14 February 2009
It is the battle between Saudi romantics and the police, who each year try to convince the public that Valentine’s Day is a heathen holiday.
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/ 26 December 2008
Decades ago film lovers in Saudi Arabia would crowd into clubs and halls to watch the same films enjoyed throughout the Arab world.
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/ 23 December 2008
An eight-year old Saudi girl who was married off by her father to a 58-year-old man has been told she cannot divorce him until she reaches puberty.
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/ 6 December 2008
Saudi Arabia has mobilised a force of 100 000 men to protect an estimated two million Muslim pilgrims flocking to Mecca for the annual hajj.
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/ 14 October 2008
Poor foreign workers bear the brunt of ”the stark horror” of Saudi Arabia’s secretive death penalty system, Amnesty International said on Tuesday.
David Cohen wonders if Western academics will be lured to one of the world’s richest universities despite its strict conservatism.
Saudi Arabia’s highest religious authority has slammed Turkish soap operas, now hugely popular in the Middle East, as being ”evil” and ”un-Islamic”.
An attack by Islamic extremists on Saudi Arabia’s oil sector would have disastrous consequences on the world market, analysts warn.
Saudi Arabia has arrested 701 Islamists in the past six months on suspicion of plotting attacks on oil-industry installations.
World energy powers embarked on a new level of dialogue to rein in runaway oil prices at an emergency meeting in the Red Sea city of Jeddah on Sunday.
The world’s top energy policymakers meet in the Red Sea city of Jeddah on Sunday for emergency talks on halting oil’s unrelenting rally.
The few words that matter at Saturday’s energy summit in Jeddah will come from a former shepherd boy, Ali al-Naimi.
Crude oil rocketed to a record high of almost $140 a barrel on Monday despite news that Saudi Arabia was ready to raise output.
Saudi Arabia, Opec’s largest producer, moved to take some of the heat out of rising fuel prices on Sunday with plans to increase production.
The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) condemned on Monday a suicide bombing against the Danish embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, saying it flouted Islamic tenets. OIC secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu was "deeply upset by this violent and extremist act", the 57-nation bloc said in a statement.
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/ 21 December 2007
The annual hajj in Saudi Arabia entered its final day on Friday as the last of almost 2,5-million Muslim pilgrims took part in the ritual ”stoning of Satan”. Eager pilgrims from across the world thronged around the Jamarat Bridge at Mina, east of Mecca, from the early hours to throw pebbles at the three massive pillars representing the devil.
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/ 17 December 2007
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has pardoned the victim of a gang-rape, whose sentencing to 200 lashes caused an international outcry, a Saudi newspaper said on Monday. The Justice Minister Abdullah bin Mohammad al-Sheikh said the king had the right to issue pardons if it was in the ”public interest”.
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/ 13 December 2007
Over one million Muslims have arrived in Saudi Arabia for the annual haj pilgrimage amid tight security in the kingdom, which is battling Islamic militants. The official Saudi Press Agency said this week that 1,2-million people had arrived so far for the five-day rites which are expected to begin on December 18.
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/ 28 November 2007
Saudi Arabia said on Wednesday it had arrested 208 people for involvement in several cells that planned an ”imminent attack” on an oil installation, and attacks on clerics and security forces. State television said one of the cells was planning to smuggle in missiles.
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/ 18 November 2007
”Kill the cable, kill the cable,” shouted the security guard as he burst through the double doors into the media room at the Intercontinental Hotel in Riyadh, followed by Saudi police. It was too late. A private meeting of Opec leaders, gathered this weekend in Riyadh for the cartel’s third meeting in its 47-year history, had just been broadcast to the world’s media.
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/ 17 September 2007
Somali leaders meeting in Saudi Arabia said they wanted to replace foreign forces backing the interim government against rebels with Arab and African troops under the aegis of the United Nations. The pact came days after a rival meeting in Eritrea by an opposition alliance that included leaders of the Islamic courts movement.
Help is being offered to Muslims afflicted by chafed thighs during the hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Gazette reported on Saturday. Worshippers at the annual event are to be offered ”seamless trousers” for the first time to guard against chafing, the English-language daily said.
Saudi Arabia on Wednesday said it beheaded three men convicted of various crimes, bringing the total number of executions announced by the ultra-conservative kingdom so far this year to 101. The Interior Ministry announced in a statement that it had executed two Indian nationals for murder and one Saudi national for rape.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno signed a reconciliation accord in the Saudi Arabia capital, Riyadh, on Thursday aimed at ending tensions between their two countries. The deal commits each of the parties to refrain from supporting rebels in the other country.
A Saudi man lost part of his nose in a heated argument with his two wives because he threatened to marry a third woman, Shams newspaper reported on Tuesday. Judaie bin Salim jokingly told his wives that he would marry again if they were unable to resolve their differences over how to divide their new house, the paper said.
Arab leaders on Thursday endorsed a peace plan to end a decades-old conflict with Israel and the Palestinian president warned of more violence if the ”hand of peace” was rejected. Speaking at the end of an Arab summit in Riyadh, Mahmoud Abbas urged Israel not to waste the chance for peace, and called for a committee led by Saudi Arabia to pursue it.
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/ 6 February 2007
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas supremo Khaled Meshaal prepared on Tuesday for crisis talks in Saudi Arabia aimed at ending a power struggle that has cost scores of lives. Abbas was the first to arrive in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, followed by Meshaal and then by Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, head of the Hamas-led government.
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/ 26 January 2007
A Saudi court has ordered a drug user to spend six months memorising the Qur’an, but he faces a year in prison if he fails to recite the Muslim holy book by heart, a newspaper said on Tuesday. The ”alternative sentence” saves the Saudi man from Jeddah from a six-month jail term, al-Watan said.
Thousands of Muslims circled the holy Kaaba stone on Tuesday before bidding farewell to Mecca while others stoned pillars representing Satan in nearby Mina as the hajj pilgrimage drew to a close. In the last ritual of the annual pilgrimage, tens of thousands of faithful walked seven times around the Kaaba in the Grand Mosque complex in Mecca and then knelt to pray.
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/ 5 September 2006
Two jailbreaks and a series of arrests in recent months suggest that sympathy for al-Qaeda militants in Saudi Arabia still runs strong despite a government crackdown, analysts said this week. The authorities in the world’s biggest oil exporter say they have seized nearly 80 al-Qaeda members or sympathisers from around the country over the last three months.
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/ 4 September 2006
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Monday Lebanon and Israel have accepted his offer to mediate the release of two Israeli soldiers captured by Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah in July. ”The two sides have accepted the effort of the secretary general to help solve this problem,” Annan told a news conference in Saudi Arabia.