MUST-READS

• Construction and Architecture
  Saudi needs quality design says Sumaya Dabbagh

  “This is what happened in Dubai, when the Emirates Towers first came up. The ‘feel’ of quality of a well-designed, well executed and long lasting project became a reference for people,” said Sumaya Dabbagh. Dabbagh is a Saudi national born in Jeddah and the current Hon Sec of the Gulf Chapter of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) who also runs Dabbagh Architects, her own practice in Dubai.

• Guantanamo
  5 Guantanamo Prisoners Released, Sent to Estonia and Oman

  Five men from Yemen were freed from the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after more than a dozen years of captivity and sent to Estonia and Oman for resettlement, U.S. officials said Wednesday, the latest in a wave of releases that have alarmed congressional opponents of closing the detention center.

• Israel-Palestine
  Israeli Officers Warn Against Punishing Palestine Authority

  Israeli military officers and experts are warning against funding freezes and other punitive acts against the Palestine Authority (PA) that they insist will jeopardize security coordination with Ramallah. Targeting PA President Mahmoud Abbas for what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has termed a "diplomatic assault" against the Jewish state will harm Israeli security interests along with those of Ramallah, experts here insist.

• Labor Issues
  1,700 fake engineers to be named, shamed in Saudi Arabia

  A list of 1,700 people who allegedly forged their engineering degrees will reportedly be released in Saudi Arabia. Employees with fake credentials had caused “tremendous construction delays” in some cases, Arab News reported.

• Saudia
  Saudi Arabia’s National Airline Refutes Gender Segregation Rumors

  Despite various media reports late last week, Saudi Arabia's national airline, Saudia, has confirmed that it has no plans to segregate its cabins by gender in response to recent complaints from male passengers.

  • Asharq Alawsat - Saudi stock market could join leading emerging markets index by April 2017: sources
• Egypt - Qatar
  Egypt-Qatar rapprochement rattles Hamas

  The timing of the Egyptian-Qatari warming may have come as a surprise to Hamas, which took nearly a week to announce that it welcomes the move, making sure that it would not come at its expense. The atmosphere prevailing within Hamas is still ambiguous over whether the Qatari position toward the movement will be affected, despite promises made by Doha to the contrary. Hamas knows that the pressure exerted on Qatar may be stronger than its ability to resist.

• Social Media
  Expert: Saudis waste eight hours a day on Internet

  Facebook is the leading social networking site frequented by Saudi users, according to a study carried out by The Online Project, an Internet public relations and social network brand management company in the Middle East.

• Women
  Labor Ministry to Deploy Female Shop Inspectors

  The Ministry of Labor plans to deploy women inspectors to ensure shops selling female accessories comply with Saudization staffing regulations.

• Egypt and Israel
  Egypt and Israel: Sinai Heat Thaws the Cold Peace

  When Sinai’s Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, Egypt's most lethal jihadi group, recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, perhaps the most interesting response was the non-response by the governments of Egypt and Israel. From the view of both, the origins and ideologies of Islamist groups are all the same. Therefore, what a group calls itself or the formality of ties is, for them, irrelevant. Israel has for years referred to the broad phenomenon of “global jihad.” For its part, Egypt has called on the international coalition against the Islamic State to counter a broad spectrum of what it considers radical Islamist groups across the region, including the Muslim Brotherhood.

• CIA Report
  The Strategic Cost of Torture, Racism, and Bigotry

  We also, however, need to start thinking about torture, racism, and bigotry in strategic terms. America’s society is far too open to hide such abuses from the world, and the argument that they are relatively minor compared to many other nations simply does not work in a world that we have virtually insisted judge us by higher standard. Some have argued that the Senate report should never have been made public, but in the real world, everything leaks, and speculation and partial disclosure almost inevitably leads to even more severe criticism of the United States.

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