newswire

Saudi Arabian men arrested for flirting

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Saudi Arabia began interrogating 57 men Saturday who were arrested for flirting with women in front of a shopping mall in the holy city of Mecca, a local newspaper reported.

The country's religious police arrested the men Thursday night for behavior that also allegedly included dancing to pop music blaring from their cars and wearing improper clothing, reported the Okaz newspaper, which is deemed close to the government.

Saturday's newspaper report did not say what kind of outfits the young men were wearing, but T-shirts emblazoned with drawings or English writing are often an invitation for harassment by the religious police. Islamic radicals also consider pop music a corrupting force.

Source: [MSNBC]

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Iran bans Laleh Seddigh, the 'female Schumacher'

By Darius Bazargan

Iranian women are exploring new boundaries and opportunities in education and careers -- not least female racing car champion Laleh Seddigh -- until that is she was banned from competitions following allegations of engine tampering.

Laleh's story is a symbol of what women can achieve in today's Iran. But her desire to prove she could compete with men at every level ended up costing her dearly.

Role model

The 31-year-old sportswoman, nicknamed "Little Schumacher" is a minor celebrity in her native country. She has also become a poster girl for Iranian women seeking to better their lot.

Source: [BBC]

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Monopoly contest stirs up Jerusalem conflict

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (AP) Monopoly, the iconic game of capitalism, has been drawn into the dispute over Jerusalem. Hasbro Inc. issued an apology Thursday after an employee, responding to complaints from pro-Palestinian groups, eliminated the word "Israel" after the city in an online contest to select names for a new Monopoly board game: Monopoly Here and Now: The World Edition.

The company also pulled all country names from other cities on the site when even more people complained, including the Israeli government, because Jerusalem was listed as the only city without a country.

The Pawtucket-based company is asking people to vote at the Monopoly Web site on which cities will be included in the new edition. Until Tuesday, every city on the site listed a country, including Paris, France; Cairo, Egypt and Jerusalem, Israel. But an employee based in London decided on her own without consulting senior management to pull "Israel" from Jerusalem after hearing complaints from pro-Palestinian groups and bloggers who argue that the city is not a part of Israel, Hasbro spokesman Wayne Charness said Thursday.

Source: [MSNBC]

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Moroccan held for impersonating prince online

By Tom Pfeiffer

RABAT - A Moroccan computer engineer appeared in court on Friday charged with setting up a Facebook account in the name of King Mohammed's brother. Fouad Mortada, 26, could face jail on the charges of falsifying computer data and imitating Prince Moulay Rachid on the social networking site without his consent.

Relatives said he was motivated by admiration for the 37-year-old prince, who is second in line to the throne. Mortada said he was blindfolded and taken to an unknown building where he was beaten, spat on and insulted, according to a Web site set up by his supporters (www.helpfouad.com).

"This is a nightmare," Mortada's uncle Mohamed El Yousfi told Reuters. "Fouad is threatened, as well as his job and his family. He had no evil intent to damage the royal family, which he respects. He has done nothing wrong." Newspapers quoted Mortada as telling the judicial police he had set up the Facebook account to give him a better chance of romantic encounters. Defense lawyer Ali Ammar said that was untrue.

Source: [MSNBC]

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Saudi religious police grab U.S. woman in Starbucks

An American businesswoman was carted off to jail by religious police in Saudi Arabia for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks in Riyadh, the Times of London reported. The woman, who spent a day behind bars, was strip-searched and forced to sign a false confession before being released, the newspaper said. The Times declined to publish her name at her request.

The 37-year-old businesswoman works for a finance company in Riyadh. Her problem began when her office lost electricity. She and her male colleagues then went to a nearby Starbucks to use the coffee shop's Internet connection. She sat with a male colleague in the Starbucks' family area, the only place women are allowed to sit with men.

"Some men came up to us with very long beards and white dresses. They asked 'Why are you here together?' I explained about the power being out in our office. They got very angry and told me what I was doing was a great sin," she told the Times.

Source: [CBS News]

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Saudi couple sues to reunite after her family annuls

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Two years ago, a knock on Fatima and Mansour al-Timani's door shattered the life they had built together. It was the police, delivering news that a judge had annulled their marriage in absentia after some of Fatima's relatives sought the divorce on grounds she had married beneath her.

That was just the beginning of an ordeal for a couple who -- under Saudi Arabia's strict segregation rules -- can no longer live together. They sued to reverse the ruling, publicized their story and sought help from a Saudi human rights group. But the two remain apart and Fatima is considering suicide, she said, if her recent appeal to King Abdullah doesn't reunite her with the man she still considers her husband.

"Only the king can resolve my case," Fatima told The Associated Press by telephone in a rare interview. "I want to return to my husband, but if that is not possible, I need to know so I can put an end to my life." Fatima's case underscores shortcomings in the kingdom's Islamic legal system in which rules of evidence are shaky, lawyers are not always present and sentences often depend on the whim of judges.

Source: [MSNBC]

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Arab world shivers in unusual cold snap

AMMAN, Jordan - The lone de-icing machine at Jordan's busy international airport worked frantically on Tuesday to clear planes for take off when a freak snowstorm blanketed this small desert country in a cold snap that has the whole region shivering.

Temperatures have plunged throughout the Middle East, dusting cities with unfamiliar snowfalls and sending residences scurrying for their blankets and jackets to cope with the near freezing temperatures in many places.

While streets in the Jordanian capital, Amman, were icy and dangerous and traffic immediately clogged, farmers have welcomed the much needed precipitation in the midst of an unusually dry winter that has damaged crops and sent food prices soaring. The desert kingdom depends heavily on winter rains for its agriculture. Snowball-wielding children also welcomed the thick snowflakes and promptly began pelting passing motorists with their rare missiles.

Source: [MSNBC]

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Arabic translation of great works aims to bridge divide

By Boyd Tonkin

Abu Dhabi: The greatest Yiddish-language writer of the 20th century features on a list of 100 books chosen to inaugurate a daring, long-term project to bring landmark foreign works to Arabic-speaking readers. The Collected Stories Of Isaac Bashevis Singer, by an author who was raised in Poland but for decades dominated Yiddish writing in New York, will join titles ranging from Sophocles and Chaucer to Stephen Hawking and Haruki Murakami among the first selections of the Kalima translation programme.

The Kalima (meaning "word" in Arabic) project aims to revive the art of translation across the Arab world and reverse the long decline in Arabic readers' access to major works of global literature, philosophy, science and history.

"The choices reflect what we consider are the real gaps in the Arab library," said Karim Nagy, the founder and chief executive of the project, which was launched yesterday in Abu Dhabi. "We shy away as far as possible from best-sellers."

Source: [The Independent]

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Papers reveal Jordan asked Nixon to attack Syria

Jordan's King Hussein sent a secret message to President Richard Nixon in 1970 pleading with him to attack Syria, according to declassified documents released Wednesday by the former president's library. The papers are among about 10,000 documents released by the Nixon Presidential Library, some of which offer harbingers of present-day events, such as concerns about terrorism and Saudi Arabia.

Library director Timothy Naftali said the documents describe challenges such as how to get the Saudis more involved in solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, how to get them more engaged against terrorism, how to address the Arab view that the United States always sides with Israel and how to build up moderate Palestinians to counter extremists.

A 1973 diplomatic cable cites this objective: "isolate and undermine terrorisms [sic] and commandos [sic] by establishing another, more stable and respectable Palestinian political entity and political personality." Documents detail U.S. efforts to persuade Saudi Arabia to move away from Fatah, the military wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization, because U.S. officials believed the PLO was supporting the terrorist-linked, anti-Israel group Black September, referred to as BSO.

Source: [CNN]

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Workers in Dubai strike over pay conditions

Thousands of foreign construction workers in the Gulf state of Dubai have gone on strike over pay and conditions. Workers blocked roads and threw stones at police on Saturday, prompting a government threat to deport rioters.

A fall in value of the UAE dirham means workers are unable to send as much money home as they previously could. Dubai's economy has boomed in recent years, fuelled largely by a construction industry reliant on low-paid workers, many from South Asia.

But the emirate has been hit by a labour shortage recently as India's own economic boom has offered an alternative source of jobs. Dubai's foreign workers are demanding higher pay and improved housing as they work on prestige projects such as the Burj Dubai -- set to be the world's tallest building. Analysts say it is time for the authorities to consider a minimum wage.

Source: [BBC]