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Our women excel in life, letting them drive will take time: Saudi minister

February 13, 2016

Munich, Feb 13: Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister defended his country’s treatment of women on Friday, saying it had made progress on female education but would take time to let them drive cars.

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“When it comes to issues like women’s driving, this is not a religious issue, it’s a societal issue,” Adel Al-Jubeir told an audience at the Munich Security Conference.

He said it was unfair to fixate on the issue of women drivers, given the Kingdom’s efforts to educate girls.

“We went from no schools for women in 1960 to universal education, to where today 55 percent of college students are women,” said Al-Jubeir.

“Some of our top doctors and engineers and lawyers and business people are women. The issue is one that is evolving just like it is in other countries.”

He compared Saudi Arabia to the United States, arguing that it took 100 years after America’s independence before women were given the right to vote, and another 100 years for it to elect its first female parliamentary speaker. “I’m not saying ‘Give us 200 years’. I’m saying ‘be patient’,” said Al-Jubeir.

“We hope that in the modern world with technology and communications that this process is accelerated, but things take time. We can’t expect to rush things.”

He also said that Daesh militants will only be defeated if Syrian President Bashar Assad is removed from power and this goal will ultimately be achieved.

Al-Jubeir called Assad the “single most effective magnet for extremists and terrorists in the region” and said his removal was crucial for restoring stability.

“That’s our objective and we will achieve it,” he said. “Unless and until there is a change in Syria, Daesh will not be defeated in Syria, period,” he added.

Separately, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif said Tehran and Riyadh must overcome years of strained relations and work for stability in Syria and the Middle East.

Following Al-Jubeir’s speech, Zarif said: “We need to work together.” He added: “Iran and Saudi Arabia cannot exclude each other from the region,” he said. “We are prepared to work with Saudi Arabia ... I believe Iran and Saudi Arabia can have shared interests in Syria.”

In Damascus, Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad vowed to retake the entire country but warned it could take a “long time.” Hours before a new cease-fire plan was announced early Friday by world powers in Munich, Assad said he backed peace talks but that negotiations do “not mean that we stop fighting terrorism.”

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News Network
May 7,2020

Dubai, May 7: As India begins the world’s largest evacuation mission by repatriating its overseas citizens stranded due to COVID-19, as many as 354 of them from the UAE will fly into their home country in the first two flights to Kerala today.

An Air India Express flight, which is scheduled to take off from Abu Dhabi to Kochi at 4.15 pm is the first flight, which will be followed by a Dubai-Kozhikode flight of the same airline at 5.10pm. The Indian missions in the UAE finalised the list of passengers, who were chosen based on the compelling reasons they submitted while registering their names.

Selection criteria

These include pregnant women and their accompanying family members in some instances, people with medical emergencies, workers and housemaids in distress, families with cancelled visas, bereaved family members who couldn’t attend funerals back home, a few students and stranded visitors and tourists including two brothers who got stranded in Dubai International Airport for 50 days, the missions said.

Short-listing the first passengers from among a database of more than 200,000 applicants, who include around 6,500 pregnant women, has been a mammoth task which posed several challenges for the missions, Neeraj Agrawal, Consul Press, Information and Culture at the Indian Consulate in Dubai told Gulf News.

He said the consulate set up an operations room in a tie-up with community volunteers from Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre, Indian Association Ajman, AKCAF Task Force, the BAPS Mandir, Indian People’s Forum, and Tamil Ladies’ Sangam.

 “We are trying to accommodate as many deserving people as possible. We expect the understanding of the people. It has been very difficult to sort out everyone’s urgency.”

“We cannot do a lottery system in this and we had to make sub- categories to ensure there is a mix of people with different types of urgencies.”

“Though we want to give priority to pregnant women, it is practically not possible and not good for the health and safety of the applicants to allot a lot of them on the same flight.”

He said 11 pregnant women have been issued tickets on the Dubai-Kozhikode flight.

“That is the threshold we can allow on a flight.”

Volunteer support

The consul appreciated the support of the volunteers in finalising the flight manifest.

“But our response ratio was very less. Many people whose names came up on top of the list were not willing to go on the first flights.”

Due to various constraints like this and sometimes the details of accompanying persons not readily being available, he said the mission was not able to quickly reach out to who might be really in need.

“However, we have given due consideration to people who got in touch with us with their emergency needs. At the time of issuing tickets, we had about 20 such cases.”

He said the Consul General of India in Dubai Vipul led the entire operation and Pankaj Bodkhe, consul, education, was in charge of the Dubai flight.

A big challenge

“It has been a big challenge. Our only concern is that despite our best efforts, sometimes people with more compelling reasons might have got left out on the first flights because of the volume of people who have reached out to us.”

Since there is a chance that some passengers with tickets might not be allowed to fly if they fail the medical screening including blood tests to check antibodies for COVID-19, he said some applicants in the waiting list have been asked to be on standby at the airport.

People with emergencies wishing to fly to other destinations also could not be included, he pointed out.

“We had to ask them to wait. We are unable to send them to other destinations. We can see their desperation. We feel sorry and desperate.”

He said the government is trying to add more flights to un-chartered destinations and a new flight from Dubai to Kannur has been added on May 12.

Passengers of today’s flights have been urged to reach the airport four to five hours prior to departure to facilitate the medical screening.

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News Network
May 5,2020

Dubai, May 5: Saudi Arabian prosecutors have ordered the arrest of a Saudi citizen for insulting an Asian expatriate and abusing him for not embracing Islam.

A video went viral online showing the expat, apparently with little knowledge of the Arabic language, being insulated by an Arabic-speaking man who does not appear in the clip, for having not embraced Islam and for not fasting.

A monitoring centre affiliated with the public prosecution examined the video the content of which “shows the citizen’s use of abusive words against the Asian resident on the pretext of inviting him to Islam,” the prosecution source said.

“The public prosecution closely follows up whatever infringes rights of citizens and residents including harm to their dignity and legal rights regardless of pretexts of such infringement,” the source added.

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Agencies
May 25,2020

Abu Dhabi, May 25: Dusty weather to persist in the UAE on Monday as well with a chance of rainfall in parts of the country, the national Met department reported.

According to the NCM, the weather today will be fair to partly cloudy, with a chance of some convective clouds formation by afternoon - eastward and northward - extending to some internal areas that may be associated with some rainfall.

The weather will get humid by night and Tuesday morning over some coastal areas.

NCM predicts a wet Eid break.

Sharjah Police issued a weather warning as heavy rain flooded roads in Sharjah's Kalba among other areas.

Moderate to fresh winds will gain strength during the day causing blowing dust and sand.

The sea will be slight to moderate in the Arabian Gulf and in Oman Sea.

Earlier on Sunday, a weather alert was issued by authorities as moderate to heavy rain - accompanied with hail - lashed parts of the UAE. A rainbow in Dubai skies cheered up residents, celebrating a unique Eid this year amid the coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic - by mostly staying home.

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