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Saudi police, together with the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, have arrested more than 100 people at a mixed-gender party in the city of Taif.
“Women took off their abayas and danced and mixed with men,” one Saudi news website reported.
Meanwhile there… Read more
A Swedish journalist/blogger is awaiting deportation from Egypt after being declared persona non grata.
Per Bjorklund, who has lived in Egypt for the last three years, was detained on arrival at Cairo airport yesterday. He told friends by phone that immigration officials had stopped him… Read more
Three Jordanian brothers have been accused of murdering their 40-year-old sister because of her “bad reputation”, the Jordan Timesreports.
The men killed the divorced mother of five after finding photos of her sitting with her alleged lover, police said. They stabbed her 15 times then set fire to… Read more
An Egyptian man has been detained in Dubai after reportedly claiming in a mosque that he was Jesus Christ. "Prosecutors are questioning the suspect over alleged charges of offending a divine religion," a senior prosecutor told Gulf News. It is unclear as yet whether he will be charged.… Read more
Violence flared in southern Yemen yesterday after a month of relative quiet.
Reuters reports that shelling and gunfire between security forces and southern separatists continued for over an hour in Zinjibar (Abyan province) around the house of a relative ofTariq al-Fadhli, the self-… Read more
The trial has begun in Jeddah of Mazen Abdul Jawad, the 32-year-old Saudi who bragged on Lebanese television about his sexual conquests. Three others, who have not been named, are also on trial with him, on charges of "publicising vice".
After an initial hearing, the case was… Read more
A headline at Almotamar, the Yemeni ruling party's website,
announces: "UK confirms its stand by Yemen in facing up the rebellion".
Displaying the British and Yemeni flags side by side, it announces that Britain is "ready to increase its development aid to Yemen" and that "the United Kingdom… Read more
Al-Azhar – Egypt's ancient Islamic university – could face legal action for discriminating against female students, Almasri Alyoumreports.
Some female students have complained that the admissions process is prejudiced as the university requires higher standards for females, it says.
Parents… Read more
Two Saudi al-Qaeda suspects have been killed in the fighting in northern Yemen, al-Hayat newspaper reported yesterday.
One of the dead men, Fahd Saleh Sulaiman al-Jatili, aged 27, was No 62 (out of 85) on the kingdom's most-wanted list. The name of the other man has not been… Read more
The plight of Iraqis who worked as interpreters for the British army in Iraq is highlighted in The National. One of them, identified as "Hussein", resigned after a few months when insurgents began targeting interpreters as traitors and two of his colleagues were killed. He then fled to… Read more
ARAB ART ONLINE: Susan Hefuna: Al Sabr Gamil (Patience is Beautiful) 2007. Ink stained on wood 140 x 170 cm. More information | Click to enlarge
