RIYADH-- The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has stepped up efforts to facilitate employment and movement of their nationals among member states. There are also plans to ease travel restrictions for the hundreds of thousands of expatriates currently living in GCC countries.

RIYADH - The Kingdom together with the other five Gulf states will have only a 0.1 percent share of the $7 trillion global e- business in 2005. This is true despite many initiatives currently in place to redress the situation and to boost Gulf countries' participation in global online business, according to Dr. Fawaz Alamy, Saudi Arabia's deputy minister for technical affairs and chairman of E-Commerce National Taskforce.

RIYADH- Saudi security officers on Tuesday raided several illegal telephone operations here which were offering inter- national calls at cut-price rates. They were operated from small houses in the Batha and Al-Wazarat areas of the capital. "The raids on the illegal telephone cabins were carried out by the personnel of the Passports Department and led to the detention of 16 people' * eyewitness Abdurahman Kutty told Arab News yesterday. Kutty said that a number of other expatriates involved in such operations were deported earlier. Over 120 illegal telephone cabins currently operate in Riyadh, employing some 1,000 expatriates.

RIYADH, 21 July 2003 — A group of 868 Iraqi refugees currently living in Rafha camp, northwest of Riyadh, will be repatriated in the next few as part of the resettlement program launched by the Riyadh-based chapter of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in cooperation with the Saudi government. The refugees have been living in Rafha camp since the 1991 Gulf War.

RIYADH, 5 July 2003 — The fight against terror and security cooperation to curb infiltration and weapons smuggling to Saudi Arabia will top the agenda of the Saudi-Yemeni Coordination Council held in the Yemeni capital Sanaa today. The meeting will be co-chaired by Prince Sultan, second deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation, who heads the Saudi delegation, the Royal Court announced yesterday.

RIYADH, 30 June 2003 — In a major move to curb illegal money transactions, Saudi Arabia has asked money exchange firms not to send remittances outside the Kingdom to unknown customers or dubious business entities. The money exchange firms, on the other hand, are also currently unifying their efforts to merge and form full-fledged licensed banking entities on a par with the Kingdom’s other commercial banks which offer the whole range of banking services.

RIYADH, 22 June 2003 — In a move to privatize the Kingdom’s education sector, the government has given permission to private organizations to set up two new universities and 36 colleges. Government incentives will include land for campuses at subsidized costs as well as soft loans for construction of buildings.

RIYADH, 28 May 2003 — The Kingdom has stepped up efforts to ensure greater participation of Saudi women in the commercial sector and to promote female entrepreneurship. The move is a joint effort between public and private sector organizations.

RIYADH, 12 May 2003 — The Kingdom yesterday pledged to work closely with oil producing and consuming countries to promote dialogue between them in order to keep oil prices steady and solve energy-related issues on a global level.

The English-language newspaper Riyadh Daily, published in the Saudi capital city, will cease publication from next month following a decision of its publishers, Al-Yamamah Press Est. This was announced here yesterday by Talaat F. Wafa, editor in chief of Riyadh Daily.

RIYADH, 3 April 2003 — The war on Iraq will last more than three months, according to a majority of people polled by Arab News. The poll, conducted in the last two days by telephone, covered a cross-section of senior professionals of 17 nationalities including Saudis, Western expatriates and Asians living in Riyadh. Some of them spoke on condition of anonymity.

RIYADH, 26 March 2003 — Saudi Arabia’s telephone revenues are expected to soar following a 25 percent increase in international calls since the war on Iraq broke out. National calls increased by 20 percent. A large number of expatriates and some Saudis have been calling their friends and relatives outside the Kingdom to assure them that they have not been affected by the war.

RIYADH, 25 March 2003 — The Kingdom has put in place an emergency plan to protect its people and environment against any nuclear accident or doses of high radiation from industrial disasters or bombardment. “We have set up 14 radiation monitoring stations and early warning systems in the country, which have so far not detected any abnormal levels of radiation because of the war on Iraq,” said Dr. Ahmad Ali Basfar, director of the Institute of Atomic Energy Research at King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) here on Sunday.

RIYADH, 20 March 2003 — More than 40 digital earthquake monitoring stations located around the Kingdom will measure the movements and aftershocks of bombs and missiles which will strike Iraq. Dr. Abdullah N. Al-Rajhi, director of tectonic studies at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), said that the earthquake monitoring stations in the Kingdom under the Saudi Arabian National Digital Seismographic Network (SANDSN) project are capable of differentiating between artificially-produced earth movements and the natural ones of earthquakes.

RIYADH, 18 March 2003 — Three illegal residents, a man and two women, have been arrested for possessing and distributing pornographic films in Abha. In another development, officials confiscated 3,036 bottles of liquor when a truck driver tried to smuggle them into the country.

RIYADH, 9 January 2003 — On behalf of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd, Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, yesterday inaugurated the 18th National Culture and Heritage Festival at Janadriah village, 45 kilometers north of the capital Riyadh.

RIYADH, 8 January 2003 — On behalf of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd, Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, will inaugurate the annual National Culture and Heritage Festival at Janadriah, 45 kilometers north of Riyadh, today.

RIYADH, 1 June 2003 — The Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Call and Guidance has fired 353 imams and muezzins (prayer callers) while at the same time asking some 1,357 imams and muezzins to attend training courses to improve their performance.

RIYADH, 5 January 2003 — The Ministry of Health has blacklisted 742 doctors of different nationalities whose educational certificates were either fake or otherwise found not to be in order. The highest number — 223 — was from Egypt, according to a report released by the MOH. The blacklisted doctors also include 11 Britons, eight Americans and one Saudi, the report added.

RIYADH, 30 December 2002 — The Ministry of Commerce has tightened restrictions on the trading of adulterated and expired food items in the Saudi market.

RIYADH, 28 August — The Ministry of Health (MoH) has called on blood donors and blood banks across the Kingdom to take maximum precautions while donating and storing blood to be used in surgical procedures.

RIYADH, 26 December 2002 — A prominent insurance expert has clarified that the traffic department is accepting compulsory third party motor insurance certificates issued by all insurance companies operating in the Kingdom as guarantees in case of traffic accidents.

RIYADH, 16 December 2002 — Partly cloudy to mostly cloudy weather conditions with chances of rain and thunderstorms over the northern cities of Central and Eastern regions besides southwestern areas of the country are forecast for the next four days. The mercury will dip to 8-10 degree centigrade in Riyadh today and four degrees in Sakaka, sending a wave of cold spell across some regions, the Presidency of Meteorology and Environment (PME) said yesterday.

RIYADH, 15 December 2002 — The Kingdom’s non-oil sector will be able to sustain positive growth in 2003 at around 3.5 percent if the economic fundamentals remain strong, a study conducted by the Saudi British Bank (SABB) has predicted. These economic fundamental factors include little inflation, strong trade balance, buoyant oil revenues and good domestic liquidity, according to the study, which was released to Arab News yesterday.

RIYADH, 5 December 2002 — While Eid Al-Fitr is celebrated across the Kingdom today, two-month-old Adnan Rafeeque is struggling with life and death at Al-Shomaisi Hospital in Riyadh. He is awaiting a high-cost emergency heart surgery which can bring smiles back on the face of this Indian child. It has however been delayed because of paucity of funds.