Arab world

    Manchester United have received a whopping £3.8BILLION takeover bid from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. The Saudi royal family, who are worth a staggering £850bn, are hoping to tempt United's current owners the Glazers into selling the club before the start of next season The proposed takeover bid comes after United chiefs have been seen spending an increasing amount of time in Saudi Arabia, according to The Sun. Sources close to the Glazer family claim that they are against selling the Premier League club but an offer that big could certainly tempt United's owners. The American owners purchased the Red Devils in 2003 for £790m but if they decided to accept Bin Salman's offer, the Glazers would bank a huge £2.2bn profit. The Saudi Prince has previously b...

ISIS bride Shamima Begum could have her British citizenship stripped to prevent her return from Syria, according to reports. Begum was one of three schoolgirls, along with Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase, from Bethnal Green Academy who left the UK in February 2015. They flew from Gatwick Airport to Turkey and later crossed the border into Syria. Officials believe there are potential options which could revoke her citizenship or allow her passport to be taken away, the Times reports. In addition to this, the Home Secretary Sajid Javid has vowed to try to prevent her return to Britain. He told the Times: "We must remember that those who left Britain to join Daesh are full of hate for our country. Britain's former counter-terrorism tsar said the east London schoolgirl will have to be a...

    Women in Saudi Arabia will be informed by text message that their marriages have ended under a new regulation aimed at ending the practice of secret divorce, whereby men in the kingdom could unilaterally decide to separate without informing their wives. The new measure was approved by the country’s justice ministry on Sunday, Agence France-Presse reports citing local media. Women… will be notified of any changes to their marital status via text message, the justice ministry said in a statement run on the Saudi state-operated Al-Ekhbariya news channel. The report added that women could access documents related to the termination of their marriage contracts on the ministry’s website. Under previous statutes, Saudi men could trigger a divorce unilaterally without tell...

    Everybody has a bankruptcy story, says Cem Sari, who’s just lived through his own version, in a year that turned into a national trauma. Turkey’s economy roared into 2018 with growth rates that were the envy of the world and vulnerabilities that had been building over years. It was like a car that could still reach high speeds, so long as the driver ignored the multiple warning lights flashing on the dashboard. And then it crashed, suffering a classic run on its currency and a brutal credit crunch. Somewhere along the way, Sari’s textile business went under, along with hundreds of other companies. Many more, including some of the country’s biggest corporate names, are still struggling to contain the fallout. The government and banks are still figuring out how to ...

    Hundreds of Tunisians staged the first protests of the Arab world against Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince on Tuesday, denouncing the kingdom's de facto ruler as a murderer involved in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The protests were a rare occurrence for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who faces no overt criticism at home and who received a lavish reception earlier in his tour in visits to Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. Since the 2011 Arab spring uprising, which unseated entrenched rulers in the region and triggered turmoil, Tunisia has undergone a democratic transition and is one of the few Arab countries to allow protests. Hundreds of protesters marched through the central Habib Bourguiba avenue in Tunis, scene of the mass protests th...

    A traditional abaya is black and covers the entire body, leaving the head, feet and hands visible. Earlier this year, the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman stated that women in the country need not feel obliged to wear the abaya, as long as they dress in a decent and respectful manner. The laws are very clear and stipulated in the laws of sharia [Islamic law]: that women wear decent, respectful clothing, like men, Mr Salman said in an interview with CBS. This, however, does not particularly specify a black abaya or a black head cover. The decision is entirely left for women to decide what type of decent and respectful attire she chooses to wear. However, many women in the country have stated that they still feel required to wear the Islamic garment, which is ...

    The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), Rami Abdurrahman, said homes were hit on Saturday in a village near the town of Hajin, near the Iraq border. He said at least 43 people died, including 17 children and 12 women, and that it was not clear if the men who died were militants or not. Sana, the Syrian state news agency, also reported the strikes. It said 40 people were killed in the area. Activist Omar Abou Leila monitors the conflict from Deir el Zour and confirmed the strikes too, but was unable to verify the death toll. However, he said IS fighters were stopping civilians from leaving the region, which resulted in the high number of civilian casualties. The US-led coalition and its local partners the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (S...

    An Egyptian woman says she married Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a religious ceremony in the United States this year, months before he was killed at a Saudi consulate in Turkey while seeking papers needed to marry a different woman. The disclosure of the marriage, which Khashoggi appears to have kept hidden from his Turkish fiancee and even members of his family, adds to the complicated timeline of Khashoggi’s final months before he was killed by a team of Saudi assassins in October. A longtime associate of Khashoggi who participated in the ceremony as a witness confirmed Atr’s account. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns. Members of Khashoggi’s family declined to comment on the marriage. His Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, said ...

    Jeremy Hunt will meet both King Salman and Prince Mohammed, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia and the man widely accused of ordering Khashoggi’s murder. Speaking before a diplomatically fraught trip that includes a visit to the United Arab Emirates to try to broker a ceasefire in Yemen, Hunt said: It is clearly unacceptable that the full circumstances behind his murder still remain unclear. We encourage the Saudi authorities to cooperate fully with the Turkish investigation into his death, so that we deliver justice for his family and the watching world. He added: The international community remain united in horror and outrage at the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi one month ago. Hunt’s trip was preceded by talks in Riyadh on Sunday between Sir Simon McDonald, th...

    Midnight on Sunday will mark a dividing line in the world of oil. Beyond that point, anyone unloading a tanker from Iran risks the full wrath of the U.S. government. The Middle East’s third-biggest oil producer has already seen many buyers flee, with sales tumbling 37 percent since President Donald Trump announced that he’d reimpose sanctions. Once those restrictions formally kick in on Nov. 5, the overall supply disruption could become the biggest since Libya erupted in civil war at the start of the decade. There are signs the impact will be mitigated, as some buyers look set to win partial exemptions while other producers particularly Saudi Arabia pump more to fill the gap. Still, there are doubts about their capacity to do so and the global nature of the oil mark...