MUST-READS

• Al Hilal wraps up Saudi League title; Jesus touts season as model of excellence

   Al Hilal manager Jorge Jesus lauded the 2023/24 season as "spectacular" after the team clinched the Roshn Saudi League title with a 4-1 victory over Al Hazem. This win secured Al Hilal’s 19th Saudi Arabian league crown and solidified their unbeaten record this season, highlighting a dominant performance throughout.

• US Marines conduct long-range convoy throughout Saudi Arabia

  The convoy, part of Exercise Native Fury 24, saw collaboration between US Marines and Sailors alongside Army Soldiers and members of the Royal Saudi Armed Forces. This exercise, sponsored by US Central Command and executed by US Marine Corps Forces Central Command, underscores the commitment to joint training and cooperation between allied nations. With over 600 personnel participating from various units and partner nations, Exercise Native Fury 24 encompasses a range of activities, including on-load and off-load operations using commercial maritime shipping, urban combat training, and dynamic training events across Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

• US nears decision point on security deal with Saudis

  The Biden administration is nearing a decision point on whether go ahead with a bilateral arms and security agreement with Saudi Arabia or hold off in hopes of eventually pairing it with a long-sought trilateral deal to normalize Saudi-Israeli relations. For now, administration officials say nothing can go forward until all the parts of the puzzle are in place, but with the Israel-Hamas war standing in the way of a normalization agreement, some analysts are arguing for an early bilateral deal that would help check Chinese influence in the region.

• Consulting firms’ grip on Saudi economy sparks local misgivings

  But some officials fear Saudi ministries have become over-reliant on western consultancies, from the Big Four of Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC to more specialist strategy consulting firms, as disgruntlement grows about the outsiders’ ever-growing role in running the country. “I’ll be in a lot of meetings where Minister X or Deputy Minister X is presenting a strategy,” said one Saudi professional who has worked both in the government and at a top consulting firm. “And the first thing that they’ll say is: ‘Ahlan wa sahlan, welcome, and I would like to let you know that consulting firm Y prepared this presentation’ . . . They don’t even take ownership of it.”

• Iran to change nuclear doctrine if existence threatened, adviser to supreme leader says

  Iran will change its nuclear doctrine if Israel threatens its existence, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader said, the latest comment by an Iranian official that raises questions about what Tehran says is its peaceful nuclear program. Tehran has always said it had no plans to obtain nuclear weapons. Western governments suspect that it wants nuclear technology to build a bomb; its nuclear program has been at the centre of a long-running dispute that has led to sanctions.

• Hamas delegates return to Qatar as deadlock continues in Gaza truce talks

  The Hamas delegation to the Gaza truce negotiations left Egypt on Thursday, the group said, signalling the failure of efforts by mediators from the US, Egypt and Qatar to get Hamas and Israel to agree a deal to pause their seven-month-old war. In a statement, Hamas said Israel's military operations in the southern Gaza city of Rafah and this week's takeover of the Palestinian side of the border crossing there with Egypt were “aimed at cutting off the path of the mediators, escalating the aggression and the genocide war”.

• Egypt’s headline inflation slowed to 32.5% in April

  Egypt’s annual urban consumer price inflation rate decreased to 32.5 percent in April from 33.3 percent in March, slowing slightly more than analysts had expected, data from the country’s statistics agency CAPMAS showed on Thursday. Month-on-month, prices rose by 1.1 percent in April, up from 1.0 percent in March. Food prices declined in April by 0.9 percent, though they were 40.5 percent higher than a year ago. A poll of 17 analysts had expected annual inflation to dip to a median 32.8 percent, continuing a slowing trend that started in September when inflation reached a peak of 38.0 percent.

• Israeli strike on Lebanon kills four Hezbollah fighters, security sources say

  An Israeli air strike on a car in southern Lebanon killed four people on Thursday, according to Lebanon’s civil defense, with security sources saying those killed were members of armed group Hezbollah. The conflict between Hezbollah and Israel has rumbled on since October in parallel to the Gaza war, with an escalation this week as both sides intensified their bombardment, fueling concern of a bigger war between the heavily-armed adversaries.

• Biden says he will stop sending bombs and artillery shells to Israel if it launches major invasion of Rafah

  “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett in an exclusive interview on “Erin Burnett OutFront,” referring to 2,000-pound bombs that Biden paused shipments of last week. “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden said.

• World Health Organization Warns Of MERS-CoV Resurfacing In Saudi Arabia

  The World Health Organization just released a report about the resurfaced MERS-CoV cases in Saudi Arabia. The WHO was alerted by the Ministry of Health of Saudi Arabia about three MERS-CoV cases, including one fatality, from April 10 to 17, 2024. The patients, aged 56 to 60, were males from Riyadh with preexisting health, and were presumably exposed to the virus in a Riyadh healthcare facility.

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