Free Republic

RIYADH — As many as 793,421 expatriates living in the country in violation of the residency and labor regulations have been arrested so far in a nationwide crackdown that was launched on Nov. 15, 2017, as part of a Nation Without Illegal Expats campaign. According to campaign officials, 196,343 of the detainees have been deported to their respective countries. Giving a breakdown of the detainees, they said 567,426 of the detainees had violated the residency law, 158,241 the labor laws and 67,754 the border security system. They said 11,084 people were caught trying to infiltrate into the Kingdom from its...

A new arrangement with the management of Google/YouTube has brightened the chance of YouTube being unblocked in Pakistan. If certain conditions of the Google management are met, YouTube will be accessible as YouTube.com.pk, a local search engine. . . . . . . She explained to the committee that the government had succeeded in convincing the Google management about religious sensitivities of Pakistanis.The local search engine will also make it easier to block any blasphemous or objectionable content, she said. . . . . . . “Instead of installing costly filtration mechanisms, Google will easily be able to block blasphemous...

For a long time, I believed that what hindered reform in the Kingdom was the mindset of the Saudi male. Over and over again, I told myself that the finger should be pointed at Saudi men, rather than women, for dictating social norms and traditions that prevent women from doing many things they do in most other countries. Last year I met one of the Saudi women who drove in Riyadh in 1990 and she personally told me that she had been rebuked by more Saudi women than men. I still was not quite persuaded. That all changed two weeks...