Tag Archives: Saudi Arabia

In an effort to increase tourism, Saudi Arabia recently eased its strict dress code for foreign women, allowing them to go without the body-shrouding abaya robe still mandatory for Saudi women. FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP via Getty Images Alainna Liloia, University of Arizona Arab women, long relegated to the private sphere by law and social custom, are gaining new access to public …

H as in hot air. Shaun Hempel Brian Scott-Quinn, University of Reading “Britain will become the Qatar of hydrogen,” Boris Johnson declared as the government laid out its 368-page strategy for reaching net zero emissions by 2050. It sounds magnificent, but what does it mean in practice? To meet its net zero targets, the UK needs to convert from an …

Eleanor Scerri, Author provided Julien Louys, Griffith University; Gilbert Price, The University of Queensland; Huw Groucutt, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and Michael Petraglia, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History If you stood in the middle of the Nefud Desert in central Arabia today, you’d be confronted on all sides by enormous sand …

Shutterstock/Michael715 Christina Philippou, University of Portsmouth Many Newcastle United fans cheered the announcement on October 7 that their club had finally been sold for £305 million. The sale, to a consortium headed up by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, adds to a long list of clubs bought by the mega-rich, including Manchester City (owned by Sheikh Mansour), Arsenal (Stan Kroenke) …

Timo A Kivimäki, University of Bath The Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli’s visit to Saudi Arabia in the summer of 2017 was a deal maker. There was agreement on a US$20 billion Sino-Saudi investment fund, along with discussions of nuclear energy projects and other economic agreements worth nearly US$70 billion. So what is going on between the two countries? Why …

The World Bank’s ease of doing business index incentives countries to do whatever they can to improve their ranking. Jongho Shin/iStock via Getty Images Fernanda G Nicola, American University The World Bank, a behemoth of an organization that provides tens of billions of dollars in aid to mostly developing countries, is in the middle of one of its biggest scandals …

Tony Walker, La Trobe University The 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington carries with it two punctuation marks. The first are the attacks themselves on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. These shocked a country that was both psychologically and physically unprepared for such a brazen assault on American soil. The second …

 Artist’s evidence-based depiction of the blast, which had the power of 1,000 Hiroshimas. Allen West and Jennifer Rice, CC BY-ND Christopher R. Moore, University of South Carolina As the inhabitants of an ancient Middle Eastern city now called Tall el-Hammam went about their daily business one day about 3,600 years ago, they had no idea an unseen icy space …

Nawid Tanha/EPA-EFE Natasha Lindstaedt, University of Essex In less than a week, the Taliban has captured nearly a dozen key cities in Afghanistan. With the departure of US forces, it is poised to take over the country from the embattled Afghan government. Over the past 20 years, the US has poured trillions of dollars into Afghanistan to oust the Taliban, …

Muslim worshippers perform the evening Tarawih prayer during the fasting month of Ramadan around the Kaaba in the Grand Mosque complex in the holy city of Mecca, on April 13, 2021. AFP via Getty Images Ahmed Kalebi, University of Nairobi As a Muslim, at least once a year I go on pilgrimage to Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, located in Saudi …