Qatar-based driving licence hopefuls are rushing to beat a July 31 deadline for the introduction of new rules requiring 50 hours of theoretical and practical lessons. The rush began last month when the driving schools started admitting learners without no-objection certificates (NOCs) from their sponsors.
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Qatar is home to 42 centenarians, including 33 Qataris and nine foreigners, official statistics indicate. Twenty of the Qatari centenarians are men and 13 are women, according to the figures published by Al Arab daily.
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Bahrain’s national safety court of first instance on Wednesday adjourned to June 16 the trial of nine Bahrainis on charges of cutting out the tongue of an expatriate. The 23-year-old Asian was attacked on March 13 during a spate of attacks on foreigners targeted by radical demonstrators as they moved from the former Gulf...
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A Saudi man has returned a school library book that he had checked out 32 years ago, a Saudi news portal said on Wednesday. The man said that he borrowed the book from the intermediate school in Al Naseem area when he was a student there, Al Sabq said.
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US President Barack Obama has reiterated support to a national dialogue in Bahrain, saying that that “both the opposition and the government must compromise to forge a just future for all Bahrainis.” Obama, in a White House meeting with Crown Prince Shaikh Salman Bin Hamad Al Khalifa, expressed “strong support for the Crown Prince’s...
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Ramadan will start on August 1 and the Eid, the feast that follows the month of fasting, will be on August 30, a Kuwaiti astronomer said. The lunar month is decided in most Muslim countries upon the sighting of the crescent, and not on astronomical calculations.
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A suggestion by Qatar’s interior ministry to extend the detention without trial of people suspected of posing grave threats to social peace and stability has stirred hot debates within the Qatari media and blogosphere. The current law gives the interior minister the right to detain a suspect for six months without trial.
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Qatar is amending a law that prescribes jail terms for airplane passengers charged with smoking and using mobile phones in commercial flights. The government said that smoking and using mobile phones in flights were not very serious offences and sentencing the guilty to prison terms was not necessary.
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A Kuwaiti lawyer said that he had volunteered to defend Ahmad Fat’hi Surur, Egypt’s former parliament speaker. “My decision is rooted in the belief that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty,” Faisal Al Otaibi, the head of the voluntary defence team, said, quoted by Kuwaiti daily Al Anba on Wednesday.
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Bahrain has given the green light to a new human rights group, making it the fourth rights watchdog in the country. The Bahrain Human Rights Watch Observatory said that it would seek to promote genuine human rights at a time when activists tend to be driven by political agendas rather than a human rights...
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