Saudi media fall for Obama Muslim joke, Saudi Arabia General News - Maktoob News

Who cares.
It's the person, and not the religion.

Cruise ship for World Cup accommodation-- that's interesting.

DUBAI - Qatar plans to use a cruise ship for accommodation when it hosts the soccer World Cup in 2022 but will need more short-term alternatives to avoid adding to an already oversupplied hotel market, analysts said on Monday.

Some 400,000 fans plus the 32 competing teams and a huge media following will descend on the tiny Gulf state in 12 years time, when it becomes the first Arab country to host the world's largest soccer competition.

"There are plans to double the supply of rooms in hotels and guest apartments by 2022 to cover the everyday requirements of an economy that is expected to continue growing strongly," the world's governing soccer body said in its official report on the evaluation of the Qatari bid.


Qatar proposes "more than 240 different properties" mostly in the four-star category but also several in the three and five-star category and a few two-star properties, it said.

Of this number, 100 are existing hotels, villages and compounds with more than 44,000 rooms, while a further 140 properties are expected to be built, including a cruise ship project in Al-Wakrah with 6,000 rooms, FIFA said.

Hotel occupancy rates in Qatar are currently fairly low, which is indicative of oversupply, analysts say.


"Qatar will have to grow its hotel supply but I would be cautious on how they will do this," said Jalil Mekouar, managing director, hotels, Middle East & Africa at Jones Lang LaSalle.

"There are already fears of oversupply of hotel rooms in Qatar and with the World Cup effect lasting two or three months only, it is important to consider what to do with this hotel supply when the event is over," he said.

Alternative solutions would be using hotel supply from neighbouring Gulf Arab countries such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates which are only one hour's flight away.

Temporary budget hotels that could be dismantled after the event could also be explored, he said.


Jones Lang LaSalle estimates Qatar's current room supply at 9,200 rooms and expects an aditional 2,000 rooms in 2011 and another 3,000 in 2012.

JP Grobbelaar, Colliers International director of research, estimates Qatar has around 10,000 rooms, a total which is set to rise to 17,000 by the end of 2011.

"In the World Cup in South Africa, a lot of people committed their homes to guest accommodation of they leased their homes out for the duration of the World Cup," Grobbelaar said. "But this is unlikely to happen in Qatar and if it does, it won't be on the same scale."

My say to this?  Smart move...

Malaysia teen bride holds public celebration-- Malaysia.

Hmmmm...at 30 years of age, i never even consider of getting married nor have any kids.
I wonder what this child had in her mind....whatmore the parents'?

1. Avoiding sinful life maybe?
2. Having legalised sex maybe?
3. Being exposed to sexual desires two to three years prior to this wedding maybe?


....on the lighter side, i remember reading this news from one China news agency long time ago. It was about this couple in some rural area in the northern province, who had gotten married for the past 3 years (?..or so, i cant really remember the detail).
They had been trying to have baby but failed until one day they were suggested to visit their local family-planning agency, and was later discovered that the man, all the while had been entering her fro m the back side!!

Hahahaha....see, even though this story i read, was like some 13 or fourteen years ago, but i really cant forget about it. This is one sure thing we human should take heed. Obliviousness can resulted in many many unfavourable situations.
What more can you expect out of a kid who is just 14 years of age. And the following thing that would come , being typical MALAY, they'd surely consummate their marriage ASAP, and don't be surprised she'd be expecting by first quarter of 2011.

Inject some senses in you people!

Mossad sees Qatar as 'real problem'?

Mossad sees Qatar as 'real problem' .


By AFP

DOHA - The chief of Israel's spy agency Mossad warned the United States that Qatar, which is to host the 2022 football World Cup, poses "a real problem," in a US diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks on Friday.

It says Meir Dagan issued the warning in a July 12 meeting with a senior US counter-terrorism official, Francis Fragos Townsend.

Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, tries to please all parties in the Middle East, including Syria, Iran and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, to underline its independence while hosting a major US base, he said.

The result is that he is "annoying everyone," according to Dagan, who pointed to frequent fallout from damaging coverage of Arab states by Qatar's satellite news channel Al-Jazeera.

The station could even provoke the Middle East's next war because Arab leaders hold Sheikh Hamad personally responsible for the coverage, according to the Mossad chief.

"I think you (the United States) should remove your bases from there ... seriously," Dagan, who retires in December, is quoted as saying. "They have confidence only because of the US presence."

Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad al-Thani, chief executive of the Qatar 2022 bid committee, told reporters in Zurich on Thursday after the World Cup announcement that his country would also host Israel if it qualifies for the finals.

The gas-rich Arab state, which does not have diplomatic ties with Israel, will respect the rules of FIFA, world football's governing body, and not discriminate against any participants in the finals, he said.


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Bloody Isrealis are true Dajjal.
Urging and hoping the US to pull away the US base in the country will enable them to attack this oil rich nation -- what an excuse!

And, that is another reason why Obama came out with silly statement yesterday that Qatar should be awarded the WC2022 hosting. And amazingly there aren't any further coverage on that statement....

Go to hell Zionist!!
It pains your asses to see an Islamic nation hosting such a big sporting game. It shows that you're truly unsporting nation.

Qatar will host 2022 World Cup.

Qatar brings 2022 World Cup to Mideast.

Dang!

Whilst I had the confident that Qatar won't be able to win this bid after their attempted 2016 Olympic bid launched sometime in October 2007, where me and the family join in the cheering crowds -- okay, more of to watch the fireworks at the Doha corniche, it was somehow not impossible to think that this tiny country would be able to bring back the winning of this bid.

Qatar will be the smallest host nation and the first in the Arab region to host the gigantic game of football celebrated worldwide every four years. It was the second smallest nation to host the game after Uruguay in 1930.

And yes siree....they've got the money no doubt about it!
Barrels of it and this winning will definitely gave more exposure and limelight on the country.
As an expat here, I'm expecting more developments coming in the pipeline for the next many years, which, even on the smaller scale if one observed and compare it's development to three years ago -- it is easily noticed from increased of vehicles and people in malls and verywhere.

Their estimated populations of 1.2 mil three years ago had jumped to current 1.7 million.

And of course....traffic jams.

Here are some of the facts that enable Qatar to win the bid, in my opinion;

1. The total cost of the construction and renovation is estimated at around $3 billion for new and current stadiums. They submitted a budget of $645.5 million to run the Confederations Cup in 2021 and the World Cup the following year. It projects a total number of 2,869,000 tickets will go on sale.

2. Over the next five years, the country will build a $25 billion rail network, an $11 billion new airport, a $5.5 billion new deep water seaport and a $1 billion crossing linking the new airport with mega-projects in the northern part of the capital, Doha. It will also spend an additional $20 billion on new roads.

"Budget is not a constraint," said Jamal Al-Kaabi, manager of roads and drainage at Ashgal, Qatar's Public Works Authority. (I love this statement...)

3. Although Qatar has been eager to display a liberal and welcoming image to inspectors and media during recent months, the sale of alcohol and the possibility of rowdy behaviour from World Cup fans are likely to be a significant hurdle in an Islamic country where public drunkenness is prohibited.
Bid representatives have said alcohol will be allowed in designated areas throughout the tournament.

4. Although the tournament is played during the two hottest months of the year, bid organisers said the heat would not be an issue thanks to climate-controlled, zero-carbon-emitting stadiums. (This, which I'm sure me and the family wont be around here anymore, would be very interesting to experience....their adverts in local tele mentioned innovative cooled stadiums -- WC will roughly be organised in June, the hottest month of the summer)

Well done Qatar!...although I don't really enjoy living here...har har har.

Freedom fight for Saudi women?

'No need' for women to cover up -Saudi police.


By AFP

JEDDAH - A Saudi religious police commander criticised the kingdom's ban on gender mixing on Tuesday and said women did not have to veil their faces to applause from his female audience.

Sheikh Ahmed al-Ghamdi, outspoken head of the Mecca branch of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, also said there was nothing in Islam to prevent women from driving, despite the Saudi ban on the practice.

"There is a difference in interpretation of the (Koranic) verse... which leads some scholars to rule that the whole body must be covered ... However other scholars approve showing the face, hands and elbows. And some even okayed the hair," he said.

He said the kingdom's mixing ban should be applied only to men and women meeting in secret, not in public places -- a rule normally enforced by the religious police.

Islam "orders a woman to cover her body to allow her to participate in social life, not to prevent her from doing so," he said.
The women in the audience, all clad in the all-black shroud-like abaya they must wear, broke out in applause.

Ghamdi, who was mysteriously fired and reinstated in April after breaking ranks with the religious police to endorse mixing, was speaking at a conference on "Women's Participation in National Development", where the hot issue was the barriers posed by Saudi Arabia's ultra-strict ban on women working.

Because Saudi women are not permitted to mix with unrelated men, must have a male guardian and are not permitted to drive, there are huge limitations on their employment opportunities.

Recently, top religious officials strongly objected to a labour ministry effort to allow Saudi women to work as cashiers in supermarkets.

Labour Minister Adel Fakieh said on Tuesday that 200,000 women in the kingdom, or 44 percent of the workforce, were unemployed, and that of them 157,000 had degrees above the level of high school.

"The unemployed women are educated above high school, while unemployed men mostly don't have degrees," he said.

Meanhwile, the country's sole female minister, Deputy Education Minister Noura al-Fayez, also came in for criticism for not having achieved much in terms of women's educational advancement and opportunities.

She urged the audience of Saudi women to have patience, and told them she could do little about certain issues, like the high accident rate for rural women teachers who must travel great distances to work because they are not permitted to live away from their families.

On Monday, King Abdullah's daughter Princess Adela bint Abdullah said a greater effort was needed to provide jobs for Saudi women.

"Women's participation (in the workforce) is behind expectation. A society cannot walk with a limping leg," she said.