Saudi TV presenter covered from head to toe

Arabnews.com

 A new TV show that discusses issues concerning teenage girls and female university students was recently broadcast with Saudi presenters dressed in black from head to toe.

The show — named Asrar Al-Banat (The Secrets of Girls) — is broadcast on Awtan TV, a Saudi religious channel that was first aired in August 2008 and has women broadcasters who are covered in the all-enveloping abaya and niqab.

There are over 60 religious satellite channels that are broadcast across the Middle East via Arabsat and Nilesat networks. The channels represent different extremes when it comes to women presenters.

Malaysia rejects call to release 10,000 Bibles

Associated Press
The Malaysian government has refused to release 10,000 Bibles confiscated for using the word “Allah” to refer to God, a banned translation in Christian texts in this Muslim-majority country, an official said Wednesday

Wahabis promise to burn down the house of the baby with Quran sayings on his skin

Moscow: Wahabis have repeatedly threatened to burn down the house of Shamil and Madina Yakubovs from the Dagestan village of Krasnooktyabrskoye, after phrases from the Holy Quran began appearing on the body of their nine-month-old son.
“They found it only unnatural that Allah showed his signs through a boy born in a family of a police officer! Wahabis consider us as kafirun (the unbelievers – IF),” Magomed-Kadyr, the boy’s grandfather said as quoted by Komsomolskaya Pravda daily on Monday.

Woman, 43, convinces teenager to marry her

Dubai: A 17-year-old boy gave his parents the shock of their life when he told them he got married to a woman who’s nearly as old as his mother.

The teenager’s father found himself obliged to pay Dh150,000 to the 43-year-old woman, a Gulf national, to divorce his son after she met him in a mall and tempted him to marry her in a neighbouring emirate, Gulf News has learnt.

“The woman convinced the boy that she fell in love with him at first sight before she lured him to get married at a sharia court of the neighbouring emirate.

“The woman’s compatriot teenage husband was away from home for two days and when he returned, he broke the earth shattering news to his father.

“The boy’s family suffered a lot before the father successfully convinced his son that the woman was an inappropriate and inconvenient wife in all respects,” said a source.

Concerned parent

Justice officials confirmed that the father, a wealthy businessman, paid his 43-year-old daughter-in-law Dh150,000 before the divorce in the same sharia court.

Gulf News has learnt that the father sent his son to study abroad and enjoy what is believed to be a recreational vacation.

Source: gulfnews

Outraged Israel says Goldstone report on Gaza ‘full of lies’

Israeli President Shimon Peres describes South African judge Richard Goldstone’s fact-finding report on the Gaza war as “ridiculous” and “full of lies.”

Goldstone’s report on Israel’s war crimes is a “bunch of lies”, Peres told the United States’ envoy to the United Nations, Susan Rice, on Thursday.

Harshly condemning the report, he said the UN is assisting the spread of baseless stories against Israel and added that this international body should not be a platform for hatred.

The UN human rights investigator in his report was more critical of Israel than Hamas in committing war crimes in Gaza in the period between December 27 and January 18, when over 1,400 Palestinians, many of them civilians, were killed in the Israeli assault.

Source: presstv.ir

Graves of Muslim WWII Soldiers desecrated in France

CAEN, France — Local officials say eight graves of Muslim soldiers who died for France in World War II have been desecrated in a village cemetery.

Maurice Duhamel, mayor of Montjoie-Saint-Martin, says he is filing suit after Nazi symbols were discovered Wednesday on the eight graves of Muslim soldiers in France’s 2nd Armored Division.
President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday denounced the “particularly odious racist acts” and asked that those responsible be found and severely punished.

Last week, the French Council for the Muslim Faith complained that those responsible for the desecration in December of some 500 Muslim soldiers’ graves in Arras, in the north, have yet to be identified. It was the third time Muslim graves there had been desecrated.

Source: abna.ir

Saudi bans building of Shia mosques

Saudi Arabia issued a ban on building of mosques, cemeteries and religious houses for Shia residing outside the Qatif, Al-Hassa and Najran where dense Shia citizens reside.
Sources informed Rasid that Eastern Province Governance issued a «Secret and Very Urgent» memo that contain clear sectarian instructions against Shia. The memo outlines instructions for enforcing a ban on building Ismaili mosques outside Najran and religious houses and cemeteries outside Qatif and Al-Hassa.

Source: abna.ir

Emir of Qatar ‘plans to reopen’ Paris hotel where Mata Hari was arrested

The Emir of Qatar is reported to be planning to reopen the Elysee Palace hotel in Paris where Mata Hari was arrested for spying.

The French business magazine Challenges reported that the Emir has made an offer of 400 million euros (£365 million) to buy the former grand hotel in the Champs Elysees from HSBC, which uses it as its French headquarters.

Once one of the French capital’s most luxurious hotels, it opened in 1897 but went bankrupt in 1920 – three years after one of its most notorious guests was arrested in one of its suites. It was subsequently turned into offices.

Mata Hari, the stage name of the Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan Margaretha Geertruida Zelle-McLeod, was accused of spying for Germany during the First World War and was shot dead by firing squad. She is said by some HSBC staff to haunt the building.

If reports of the Qatari bid are confirmed and HSBC accepts the offer, the site would host one of the city’s most splendid hotels, including new restaurants and luxury shops.

Source: telegraph.co.uk

Pakistan condemns US for abandoning Afghan checkpoints

American military leaders have been accused of undermining Pakistan’s offensive against the Taliban by abandoning Afghan border checkpoints.

Islamabad fears the move will allow Taliban fighters to cross into South Waziristan to fight against them.

Gen Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan’s chief of army staff, complained about the lack of co-operation when he met General David Petraeus, the United States’ chief of Central Command on Monday it has emerged.

His concern is focused on the removal of eight American checkpoints, four of which border South Waziristan including Zambali and Nurkha.

The closure was ordered after Gen Stanley McChrystal, the head of Nato forces in Afghanistan, completed a strategy review in which he said Western forces should focus on protecting towns and cities rather than remote outposts.

Colonel Wayne Shanks, a spokesman for Nato-led forces in Afghanistan, insisted there was no gap in security.

“Re-positioning of forces doesn’t mean we are pulling out of an area. You wouldn’t see a huge gap in security capability.”

He said Nato forces were liaising with Afghan army and police in the area and “watching the situation extremely carefully.”

The Pakistani objections came as militants fighters fought a fierce rearguard to retain control of Kotkai, the home of Hakimullah Mehsud, their Pakistani leader.

In heavy fighting, seven soldiers were killed, including a major and a further seven were injured. Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq claimed up to 45 soldiers had been killed in the battle. “We gave them a really tough time in Kotkai,” he said.

The army got as far as Torghundai, a mountainous spot which lies inside the Kotkai district, when it met heavy resistance and aerial support was called in.

Last night Army troops surrounding Kotkai were being held at bay by an estimated 70 Taliban fighters despite an army pledge to take the town by nightfall. The deadline passed with Taliban militants holding the troops at just over quarter of a mile from the town with rounds of AK47 fire and volleys of rocket propelled grenades.

The ferocity of the Taliban’s fightback surprised Pakistan’s army chiefs who fear the impact reinforcements from Afghanistan might have.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

Yemen could become first nation to run out of water

One type of vehicle is always within sight on Yemen’s roads: the water truck.

The brightly coloured, dilapidated tankers, often driven by Kalashnikov-wielding tribesmen, travel winding mountain roads and cross deserts to bring Yemenis a commodity more precious than petrol. It is one that increasingly only the rich can afford, with supply through the water mains regularly cut off. Others must rely on scarce rain, charity or crime to stave off thirst.

Yemen is set to be the first country in the world to run out of water, providing a taste of the conflict and mass movement of populations that may spread across the world if population growth outstrips natural resources.

Government and experts agree that the capital, Sanaa, has about ten years at current rates before its wells run dry but the city of two million continues to grow as people are forced to leave other areas because of water shortages.

In Yemen, which is fighting three insurgencies, the battle lines of tribal wars have traditionally followed the lines of the wadis, desert valleys that become rivers when the rare rains fall. Amid one of the world’s highest rates of population growth — 3.46 per cent last year — the water shortage has become critical and is driving civil unrest.

Hannan, an 18-year-old mother of one from Lahej, near Aden, said that only the comparatively well-off could plan for cuts in supply. “In a good week we’ll have a water supply all week but then the following week there will be water only for a day or two,” she said.

She and her husband, a factory worker, pay 3,000 riyals (£9) for a week’s supply of water from a touring water truck when the taps run dry. With an income of only 20,000 riyals (£60) per month, this means the family often spend half their income on water.

Source: timesonline.co.uk