Saudi Arabia

MECCA, Saudi Arabia (AP) — One million Muslim pilgrims were converging on Saudi Arabia’s holy city of Mecca on Wednesday for the largest hajj since the coronavirus pandemic severely curtailed access to one of Islam’s five pillars.

Saudi Arabia’s decision to allow some 850,000 Muslims from abroad to make the annual pilgrimage, which begins on Thursday, marks a major step toward normalcy after two years of a drastically scaled-down hajj restricted to Saudi residents.

04 July 2022; MEMO: Saudi Arabia's unemployment fell to 10.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2022, down from 11 per cent at the end of last year, the state-run General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT) announced yesterday.

GASTAT said in its report that the kingdom's female unemployment rate had declined to "20.2 per cent, compared to 22.5 per cent at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021," noting that this was the "lowest since 2001."

RIYADH, Jul 1 (NNN-SPA) – Saudi Arabian Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, announced yesterday, national priorities in research, development and innovation in the next 20 years.

The national “priorities and aspirations” aim to boost the contribution of the sector to GDP, to 60 billion Saudi riyals (about 16 billion U.S. dollars), in 2040.

The two-decade plans cover human health, environmental sustainability, energy and industry pioneering, and future economies, it said.

30 June 2022; MEMO: Saudi Arabia has announced that it will impose a $2,665 (10,000 riyals) fine against pilgrims attempting to perform the Hajj without a permit.

Yesterday the Public Security spokesperson, Brigadier General Sami Al-Shuwairekh, said that pilgrims must obtain a Hajj permit from the relevant authorities before attempting to undertake the pilgrimage, a fundamental pillar of the faith.

30 June 2022; MEMO: Officials from the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are currently negotiating on a deal regarding the ownership of islands in the Red Sea, in a move which could further ties between Riyadh and Tel Aviv.

29 June 2022; MEMO: Saudi Arabia's population has decreased by at least 2.6 per cent over the past two years, due to the significant amount of expatriate workers who left the Kingdom throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a report published today by the Kingdom's General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT), it stated that the country's population in the middle of last year was 34.1 million, down from 35 million in the middle of 2020.

26 June 2022; MEMO: Saudi authorities have released Murtaja Qureiris, who was once considered to be the kingdom's youngest political prisoner.

Qureiris who is from the country's Shia minority was arrested at the age of 13 in 2014 for allegedly taking part in demonstrations, aged 10 during the Arab Spring in 2011. His release was confirmed by a human rights group on Friday.

"Murtaja Qureiris, detained since 2014 when he was only 13, has been released following the expiry of his sentence," ALQST for Human Rights said on Twitter.

RIYADH, Jun 25 (NNN-SPA) – Chinese telecom giant, Huawei, has opened its largest technology experience centre outside of China, in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh.

In collaboration with the Saudi Space Commission, Huawei launched the Future Space in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, said Huawei Saudi Arabia, the company’s Saudi branch, in a press release.

19 June 2022; MEMO: Saudi Arabia has partially outsourced the Hajj pilgrimage process to a company with ties to India's far-right ruling party and its leader Narendra Modi, in what is yet another revelation regarding the kingdom's reforms of the pilgrimage process.

17 June 2022; MEMO: Several human rights organisations and Islamic institutions have launched a hashtag campaign "Hajj is not safe" to expose what they say are violations and abuses carried out by Saudi Arabian authorities against pilgrims and visitors taking part in Hajj and Umrah.