MUST-READS

• Healthcare
  Rise in MERS cases prompts Saudi warning to residents

  Saudi Arabia's Health Ministry on Monday urged residents of the world's top oil exporter to renew precautions against Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) after a rise in new cases of the disease since early September.

• Christians in Iraq
  Christians of Mosul Find Haven in Jordan

  Their flight is part of a larger exodus of Christians leaving those Arab lands where religious intolerance is on the rise, a trend that has caused concern among Christians outside the region — including the pope.

  • Small Wars Journal - Visit to the Mosul Front Lines Briefing Note
• Saudi Tourism
  Average Saudi tourist spends $11,450 on foreign holidays

  A report that compared spending habits of citizens of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries — Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar — on foreign tourism showed that Bahrainis topped the list with an average Bahraini tourist spending SR45,000 on foreign holidays. The Saudis came in a close second at SR43,000, followed by Emiratis (SR39,000), Kuwaitis (SR35,000), Omanis (SR34,000) and Qataris (SR25,000). Sixty-one percent of Saudis tourists said they prefer to travel with their families, while 37 percent said they prefer to travel alone and the remaining 2 percent preferred large groups. The average Saudi tourist spends SR21,000 on domestic holidays.

  • Saudi Gazette - Infographic: Saudis prefer family tourism
• Petrochemicals
  Saudi’s SABIC, Shell shelve petchem plant expansion in Jubail

  Saudi Basic Industries Corp and Royal Dutch Shell have shelved plans to expand an existing petrochemical joint venture in Saudi Arabia as the results of feasibility studies were not encouraging.

• Syrian Opposition Forces
  Syrians to be trained to defend territory, not take ground from jihadists, officials say

  Although moderate Syrian fighters are deemed essential to defeating the Islamic State under the Obama administration’s strategy, officials do not believe the newly assembled units will be capable of capturing key towns from militants without the help of forward-deployed U.S. combat teams, which President Obama has so far ruled out. The Syrian rebel force will be tasked instead with trying to prevent the Islamic State from extending its reach beyond the large stretches of territory it already controls.

• ISIS Media
  The Islamic State’s media warfare

  “The Islamic State believes that media warfare is equal in importance to military warfare,” Marwan Shehade, a Jordanian expert on Islamic movements, told Al-Monitor. “The media is essential when it comes to any of IS' activities; besides, they have been working on boosting their talents, especially with all the financial and human resources they acquired from around the Arab and Muslim world,” he said. According to Shehade, IS had the chance to equip itself with cutting-edge technology. “Analyzing the latest videos broadcast by the group shows that they have cutting-edge tools and professional operators. I have to say that they are generous when it comes to their media machine, and they pay good money to professionals.”

• 1970s Saudi Arabia
  The Burgundy Bonneville

  In the first few years after the 1973 oil boom, hundreds of European and American technocrats, construction superintendents, management experts and outright speculators had come and gone. An odd consequence of this phenomenon was that many of them left their dogs behind. I went to the Riyadh Zoo in 1974, and one of the enclosures displayed a pair of Great Danes, given to the zoo by some departing Scandinavian dignitary. So, I’m more than willing to believe the legend of the Dog Gang known to all in the expatriate community.

• Islamic State
  Saudi Arabia could aid talks with ISIS in hostage situations, says veteran negotiator

  He told Amanpour that if asked to engage in open talks with the terrorist group, he would have a “conversation… with somebody in Saudi Arabia”.

• Shi'a Protests
  Hizballah Cavalcade: The Shia Militant Response to Ayatollah Nimr al-Nimr’s Death Sentence

  Protests in Saudi began in early 2011 and in part addressed anti-Shia discrimination suffered by the group in the Shia majority area in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province; primarily zones around the Shia-majority towns and villages near the city of Qatif.4 Following the 2011 Saudi intervention in Bahrain, protests against the Saudi government increased in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia among Shia protesters.5 Following the 2011-2012 protests, links between Bahrain’s and Saudi Arabia’s protest movement spilled over into the more militant circles which actively promoted Nimr’s defiant stance and a hope to combine their fronts against common foes.

• INTERVIEW
  Saudi’s ACWA Power Eyes Expansion After IFC Investment

  The Wall Street Journal sits down with ACWA’s Chief Executive Paddy Padmanathan to discuss the investment and the company’s future projects.

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