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The U.N. Year of Solidarity With the Palestinian Cause By Julio Severo By a United Nations resolution, 2014 is the “Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” an occasion that has been used by the U.N. to organize special activities along with governments and non-governmental organizations to promote the Palestinian cause. The resolution was passed on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People in 2013, a very busy year for the U.N., which adopted a total of 21 resolutions singling out Israel for criticism. In contrast, the rest of the world combined received just 4 of such condemnatory resolutions...

DUBAI: A top Saudi Muslim preacher called Friday for a global code of conduct for leaders, scholars and young people to halt a further slide into violence and "terror" in the Middle East. The U.S.-allied kingdom has grown increasingly alarmed since militants from an offshoot of Al-Qaeda captured large areas of neighboring Iraq and Syria and declared an Islamic caliphate. At his Friday sermon in Mecca, the imam and preacher of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Abdul-Rahman al-Sudais, decried "mass massacres against humanity" in Gaza, Syria and Iraq. "All of this happens under the sight and hearing of the...

Saudi authorities beheaded a Pakistani Thursday after sentencing him to death for drug trafficking, the Interior Ministry said, taking to 25 the number of executions announced this year.

On the heels of reports that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) promised funds to Hamas in order to procure the current 72-hour ceasefire, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal openly pledged $500 million to "rebuild" Gaza. Speaking at an Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting in Jeddah on Tuesday, al-Faisal accused Israel of trying "to wipe off Palestinian existence," and blamed the world for supporting "Israel's savagery against the people of Gaza." Calling for Arab unity at a time when internecine bloodbaths are raging throughout the Middle East, al-Faisal urged the Arab nations to stand together on...

Obama's Cairo Speach: A self-deluded fool gave it, a man determined to avoid confronting the enemies of mankind until an Islamic-inspired genocide required it “A greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: assalaamu alaykum” The speaker had what one might imagine, given his background, a better insight into Islam, Muslims, and the Middle East than others who had preceded him. He said he was seeking “a new beginning” that was “based on mutual interests and mutual respect” because his nation and those in the Middle East shared “common principles—principles of justice and progress, tolerance and dignity of all...

WITH HIS dreamy eyes, well-groomed beard and razor-sharp cheekbones, Omar Borkan Al Gala is undeniably handsome. And according to US website Jezebel he’s one of three men who were deported last week from Saudi Arabia - reportedly because of his good looks. The first images of the swoonsome Dubai-based actor and photographer emerged after Arabic newspaper Elaph reported a trio of hunks had been deported from Saudi Arabia over fears women would find them irresistible.

Nosebleeds are common among children and young adults, but one young man's frequent nosebleeds turned out to have a rather unusual cause: He had a tooth in his nose, according to a new report of his case. After suffering from nosebleeds once or twice a month for three years, the 22-year-old man in Saudi Arabia consulted a doctor, who found an ivory-white, bony mass, about half an inch (1 centimeter) long in the man's nose. The doctors then consulted with dentist colleagues, who concluded that the mass was actually an extra tooth that had somehow ended up growing in his...

Saudi men have been banned from marrying women from three Asian and one African country as the Gulf state toughens the rules restricting marriage with foreigners, a local daily said. Marrying women from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar and Chad is no longer permissible, Makkah newspaper reported. It said the total population of these communities in Saudi Arabia has exceeded 500,000 people, citing unofficial statistics, implying that this might be the reason.

There was uproar in Saudi Arabia after a female news anchor appeared on national television without wearing a headscarf. The news anchor, name undisclosed, read the headlines for the Al Ekhbariya news channel. Probably the only reason she was allowed to appear on a Saudi channel without the headscarf was that she read news from a London studio. The The "uncovered" girl, whose body is completely covered in a jacket until the neck, has now become a part of a national scandal for the orthodox Muslim country. She apparently wore a hijab on her previous reading sessions as photos appeared...

In Saudi Arabia, a man suspected of contracting Ebola during a recent business trip to Sierra Leone also died early on Wednesday in Jeddah, the Health Ministry said. Saudi Arabia has already suspended pilgrimage visas from West African countries, which could prevent those hoping to visit Mecca for the Haj in early October. Liberia, where the death toll is rising fastest, is struggling to cope. Many residents are panicking, in some cases casting out the bodies of family members onto the streets of Monrovia to avoid quarantine measures. Beneath heavy rain, ambulance sirens wailed through the otherwise quiet streets of...

Saudi Health Ministry confirms a Saudi man suspected of having the #ebola virus has died in a hospital in Jeddah

Saudi Arabia said Tuesday it is testing a man for the Ebola virus after he showed symptoms of the viral hemorrhagic fever following a recent trip to Sierra Leone. The Health Ministry said the symptoms appeared in the 40-year-old Saudi man at a hospital in the western city of Jiddah. He is in critical condition and being treated in a unit with advanced isolation and infection-control capabilities. Different types of viral hemorrhagic fevers have been found in the kingdom, but no case of Ebola has ever been detected there, according to the ministry. The cause of the Saudi man's sickness...

Arabia’s King Abdullah on Friday broke his silence on the Gaza conflict, which started in early July, by condemning the conflict and the inaction of the international community. “This [international] community, which has observed silently what is happening in the whole region, was indifferent to what is happening as if what is happening is not its concern,” Abdullah said in a statement on Saudi state-run television. Despite describing the situation in Gaza as “war crimes against humanity,” the Saudi monarch stopped short of calling for action against Israel. The Gaza conflict has highlighted a growing rift in the Arab world...

Saudi Arabia has deployed thousands of troops from Egypt and Pakistan along its frontier with Iraq, amid fears of invasion by the al-Qaeda splinter group that has declared a radical Islamic state across the border. Panicked by the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Isis), Riyadh has taken the drastic step of calling in military assistance from its close allies to shore up the porous 500-mile border, Gulf security sources said.

CAIRO: Battling Palestinian militants in Gaza two years ago, Israel found itself pressed from all sides by unfriendly Arab neighbors to end the fighting. Not this time. After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated ceasefire even after more than...

A joint investigation by the Washington Examiner and the nonprofit watchdog group Judicial Watch found that former President Clinton gave 215 speeches and earned $48 million while his wife presided over U.S. foreign policy, raising questions about whether the Clintons fulfilled ethics agreements related to the Clinton Foundation during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch and released Wednesday in an ongoing Freedom of Information Act case, State Department officials charged with reviewing Bill Clinton's proposed speeches did not object to a single one. Some of the speeches were delivered in global hotspots...

Let’s concede for a moment that most of us don’t believe the United States should be taking sides in conflicts abroad. Even so, most Americans would probably agree that at a minimum our diplomatic efforts should not cause unnecessary harm. Which brings me to Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent misadventure in the Middle East. It seems like a rather big deal that Egypt, Israel, Fatah, Jordan, Saudi Arabia—ostensibly, all allies of ours—agree on anything. This development, one imagines, might be something the United States would be interested in fostering rather than destroying. Certainly, the idea that Hamas’ power should...

Was presenting programme on Sama Dubai TV when incident occuredA Ramadan TV programme nearly turned into a tragedy after a lioness featured on the programme attacked the host. Well known Saudi MBC TV presenter Lujain Omran was presenting a programme on Sama Dubai TV when the incident occured. The lioness leaps onto the host and drops her to the floor before other TV crew come to the terrified host’s rescue, Emarat Al Youm, who carried the video, reported.

The Voice of America has just published a report implicating wealthy Saudis, Kuwaitis and Qataris in the funding of global jihad. The report also points out the role played by Islamic charities in the financing of Jihad.

Women were also jailed 10 days in the first sentence of its kind in Saudi ArabiaA Saudi court sentenced two local women to 10 days in prison and ordered them lashed 10 times each after they were found guilty of swearing at each other on WhatsApp. The judge at the court in the western Red Sea port of Jeddah tried to reconcile the two but they refused and insisted on charging each other. “The judge had no choice but to sentence the two and make them write a statement not to abuse each other again,” Arar daily said, adding that...