SAUDI ARABIA: Kingdom steps up hunt for 'witches' and 'black magicians'

When the popular 46-year-old Lebanese psychic Ali Sibat went on-air and made his predictions about the future, the phone lines of the satellite television station Sheherazade used to be flooded with calls.

But what the star psychic probably did not predict was that his claims to supernatural prowess would land him a death sentence.

"He was the most popular psychic on the channel," the Lebanese news agency Naharnet quoted Sibat’s lawyer May Khansa as saying. "The number of callers, including from all over the gulf, spiked in number when he appeared."

But while on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia last year, Sibat was spotted by religious police in the holy city of Medina. Their job it is to battle vice and uphold virtue in the ultraconservative kingdom. So they arrested Sibat in his room at the Medina Hotel on charges of sorcery.

On Nov. 9, Sibat was given a death sentence by a Mecca court for allegedly practicing witchcraft.

SAUDI ARABIA: Security forces issue stern warnings ahead of hajj pilgrimage

Handling an influx of 2.5 million pilgrims is a challenge during a good year, but at a time of increased tensions with Iran and rampant fears of swine flu, Saudi authorities are on high alert for any threat that could disrupt hajj, the annual holy Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

On Sunday, security forces sent a clear message to would-be saboteurs by staging a huge military demonstration involving thousands of troops, armored vehicles, helicopters, and first response teams. The Saudi government has announced it will deploy more than 100,000 security and emergency personnel for hajj, which will last from Wednesday to Sunday.

Sunday's show of force comes after months of deteriorating relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran over the Houthi rebellion in northern Yemen, with both sides accusing the other of military intervention. Last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad warned against Saudi restrictions on Iranian pilgrims, eliciting a sharp rebuke from Riyadh with the top Saudi cleric warning against the politicizing of hajj.

"We hope we will not be obliged to resort to force," Saudi interior minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz told reporters after the demonstration Sunday, referring to calls by some Iranian figures for their pilgrims to use hajj as an opportunity to protest against the United States and Israel, Agence France Press reported.

MIDDLE EAST: Saudi beauty queen attacked for weight

Beauty contests are notoriously catty, and the Miss Arab World pageant in Cairo last week proved no exception.

Muwadda Nour of Saudi Arabia had barely lain hands on her faux-jewel encrusted crown when critics began sniping that at approximately 200 pounds, she "did not meet the required standards" of a beauty queen, according to the popular Arab entertainment site Wikeez.

Delphine Edde, the publisher of Wikeez, confirmed to The Times that the site spoke with organizers and contestants at the event.

Despite the controversy, Nour kept her crown, beating out 15 other young women between the ages of 18-24 from around the region. 

Jessy Zaher of Lebanon took second place.

The Miss Arab World pageant aims to be more inclusive by allowing veiled and non-veiled women to compete alongside without having to compromise their values for events like swimwear competitions. Instead, the contestants strut down the catwalk in their national costumes.

 For more pictures, visit Wikeez's slideshow of the event.

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

Photo: Miss Arab World 2009-2010 was attacked for being too heavy. Credit: Reuters

YEMEN: Raging insurgency exacerbates tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran

After years of teetering on the edge of stability, Yemen appears to be losing control of a minority rebellion on its northern border, raising concerns that the fighting could ignite regional tensions and possibly become a battleground for a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

In Yemen, extreme poverty, water shortages and a history of civil strife have helped foster extremism and weaken the central government, which increasingly relies on its oil-rich neighbor to the north, Saudi Arabia, for aid and military support. Many members of Yemen's Zaidi sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam whose followers make up about a third of the country (including the president) and a majority in the north, claim that Saudi Arabia's ultra-conservative interpretation of Wahhabi Islam has influenced the government to marginalize Shiites.

In August, the Yemeni government launched Operation Scorched Earth against Zaidi Shiite rebels in the north, known as Houthis. Although the government has denied the crackdown is religiously motivated, the struggle has broken down along sectarian lines, with the Houthis accusing Saudi Arabia of providing military support to the government and the government accusing Iran of supporting the rebels.

MIDDLE EAST: Women's status up in Saudi Arabia, down in Syria, says study

The subject of women's rights in the Middle East is contentious. Sensational media coverage of honor killings and child brides equates religious conservatism with gender inequality, incensing Western feminists on the one hand and provoking regional backlashes on the other.

The reality is far more nuanced, according to the the 2009 Global Gender Gap Report released in late October by the World Economic Forum, which ranks countries based on women's economic participation, educational attainment, health and political empowerment.

In Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar -- socially conservative Persian Gulf countries that all rely on some form of Sharia Islamic law -- more women than men enroll in higher education, although they have yet to be fully incorporated into the workforce. 

Syria, on the other hand, which is ruled by a nominally secular regime, has slid in the rankings for the last three years. 

Iran scores low in the fields of economic, educational and health equality, but performs relatively well on political empowerment. 

Saudi Arabia and Egypt still hover near the bottom of the list, but have improved steadily since 2006. 

Yemen remained the lowest-ranked country in the world for the fourth year in a row.

SAUDI ARABIA: Push for a smoke-free Hajj pilgrimage

It is not only in the bars of New York or bistros of Paris where smokers are being pushed to the sidelines and asked to step outside to light that cigarette. Now, Saudi Arabia's health ministry is launching a public campaign to make the holy cities of Mecca and Medina smoke-free during this year’s pilgrimage season.

The move is a part of a larger health drive for the pilgrimage season that has been spearheaded by the ministry to create a healthier environment for pilgrims and prevent a swine flu breakout among them. Over 2 million people from around the world travel to the two holy cities each year to perform the pilgrimage.

Speaking to the Saudi English-language daily Arab News, Majed Al-Munif of the health ministry’s Tobacco Control Program said that brochures advertising the anti-smoking campaign are being handed out to arriving pilgrims.

“Under the ministry’s Tobacco Control Program, we have printed around 1.5 million leaflets in different languages for distribution among pilgrims — both smokers and nonsmokers,” he said. 

SAUDI ARABIA: King pardons female journalist sentenced to 60 lashes

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has pardoned a female reporter who was sentenced to flogging for her involvement in a risqué talk show in which a Saudi man bragged about his sexual exploits on air.

Twenty-two-year-old Rozanna Yami was sentenced by a court Saturday to 60 lashes for helping to produce the controversial July episode of the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp.’s Bold Red Line talk show in which guest Mazen Abdul-Jawad boasted publicly about his sex life in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

On Monday, King Abdullah intervened in the case and granted Yami a royal pardon. The reporter expressed relief over the king’s overruling of her sentence and thanked him. 

"The king has vindicated me. I am satisfied with the king's order, and I accept the decisions of the sovereign," she told Reuters news agency. 

SAUDI ARABIA: 'Abu Kab' loses appeal after killing three while 'drifting' in a car

The Saudi supreme court has upheld a verdict against Faisal Otaibi, known as "Abu Kab" (which translates roughly as "the guy with the baseball cap"), the disgraced naval officer found guilty of killing three people, two of them minors, in a stunt-driving accident four years ago.

Otaibi was sentenced to 3,000 lashes, 20 years in prison and a lifetime ban on driving after his car spun out of control during a "drifting" stunt, killing brothers Ahmed and Abdul Aziz, ages 14 and 11, and 18-year-old Ibrahim.

Illegal drag racing and stunt driving are hugely popular among young men in Saudi Arabia, fueled mostly by high unemployment, boredom and large expendable incomes.

SAUDI ARABIA: Will new university bring freedoms?

Saudi Arabia’s first coeducational university, a graduate research institution known as the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or KAUST, is a test of “whether the kingdom is prepared to expand academic freedoms and women’s rights,” said Human Rights Watch.

The university, which opened Wednesday, is located about 50 miles north of the Red Sea city of Jidda. The Saudi-based English-language daily Arab News featured a glowing -- some would say glorifying -- account of the inauguration ceremony:

“Breathtaking, spectacular and just amazing." That is how Wednesday’s inauguration ceremony of the multibillion-dollar King Abdullah University of Science and Technology was described by a large section of the nearly 3,000 guests that included prominent Saudis, foreign leaders, Nobel laureates, researchers, scientists and journalists.”

YEMEN: A cease-fire offer

Yemen called for a cease-fire Saturday with Shiite rebels in the northwest mountains, where tens of thousands of refugees have fled in recent weeks and international humanitarian organizations have condemned government airstrikes.

There were conflicting reports over whether the rebels would stop fighting. The insurgents, who belong to the Shiite Zaidi sect, said they were considering the offer. But a military website connected with the government reported that hostilities continued after the conditional cease-fire was announced to allow food and aid to reach the region.

The rebels rejected a similar government proposal several weeks ago. International alarm over the fighting – the latest spasm in a five-year insurgency – deepened Thursday when Yemeni airstrikes near the town of Harf Sufyan killed 87 people, many of them women, children and the elderly.