Stay true to the dreams of thy youth

• Only 38 percent of Saudis own houses - Arab News

  Official statistics show that only about 38 percent of Saudis own houses, including the communal ones. Banking sources described this rate as low compared to the other developed countries, where 65 to 75 percent of the population own houses.

• Saudi Investing $1.2B | The Manila Bulletin Newspaper Online

  A Saudi Arabian agro-industrial firm is investing $1.2 billion to cultivate an initial 2,000 hectares of idle lands in Maguindanao for the production of banana and root crops that are highly in demand in their oil-rich nation.

• Report: Saudi Arabia to acquire nuclear weapons if Iran tests bomb | GlobalPost

  BEIRUT, Lebanon — Saudi Arabia will "within weeks" seek to purchase nuclear weapons if Iran tests an atomic bomb, according to the British newspaper The Times. The report comes as fears of an Iranian nuclear weapon mount in Israel and the United States.

• Obama riled up Republicans on contraception, and then delivers a knock-out punch.

  That's the nitty-gritty. The fun part of this is that Obama just pulled a fast one on Republicans. He drew this out for two weeks, letting Republicans work themselves into a frenzy of anti-contraception rhetoric, all thinly disguised as concern for religious liberty, and then created a compromise that addressed their purported concerns but without actually reducing women's access to contraception, which is what this has always been about.

• PhotoBlog - World Press Photo of the year awarded to Samuel Aranda

  The international jury of the 55th annual World Press Photo Contest announced Friday that it had selected a picture by Samuel Aranda as the World Press Photo of the Year 2011. Jurors said the photo of a veiled woman holding a wounded relative in her arms after a demonstration in Yemen captured multiple facets of the "Arab Spring" uprisings across the Middle East last year. It was taken at a field hospital inside a mosque in Sanaa on October 15.

• Santorum: Obama leading Christians to the ‘guillotine’ | The Raw Story

  ** It is embarrassing that this fear-mongering xenophobe won three primaries last week... *** Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum warned on Wednesday that President Barack Obama and other liberals are leading people of faith down a path that ends at the guillotine.

• Romney "Glitter Bomber" Faces $1,000 if Convicted of Misdemeanour

  ** You've got to be kidding me. Jail time for throwing glitter???? ** A Colorado student is facing the possibility of six months in jail for throwing glitter at Mitt Romney this week in an increasingly popular form of liberal protest known as a "glitter bombing." Peter Lucas Smith, a 20-year-old student at the University of Colorado, staged his sparkly protest after a Romney speech following Tuesday's Colorado caucuses. While the glitter bomb is most associated with vocal supporters of gay marriage, Smith told Reuters that his protest was in response to the GOP front-runner's "general political philosophy."

• Manish Bapna: 2012: A Breakthrough for Renewable Energy?

  So what is getting investors -- from asset financiers to venture capitalists -- so excited? The answer is simple: wind and solar energy is becoming increasingly cost competitive with coal and natural gas. In the past few years, the costs of PV modules and wind turbines have tumbled, driven mainly by technology innovations and a maturing supply chain. The results are evident in falling clean energy prices around the world.

• The Case for Bombing Iran Shows Hawks Wrong All Over Again - The Daily Beast

  I don’t want a nuclear-armed Iran any more than Ferguson does. But I also don’t want to be jollied into another war, having just helped as a U.S. taxpayer to spend more than $1 trillion on the biggest fiasco in our foreign-policy history that killed tens of thousands and displaced countless others and brought us a rather long list of problems, on assurances like these. We cannot foreclose the possibility that a strike against Iran might one day be defensible or necessary. But we should be acknowledging that prospect humbly, and with awareness of the certain fact that it will unleash forces that we can’t anticipate or contain, which is a far different thing from a blithe call from Harvard Yard for “creative destruction.” You’d think if our war caucus had learned anything in the past decade, they’d have learned that.

• Sky News Arabia on track for spring launch - Media - ArabianBusiness.com

  Sky News Arabia said on Wednesday it was on track to launch operations in the spring after moving its news team into new studios in Abu Dhabi. The free-to-air 24-hour Arabic rolling news channel said its editorial and operational teams were now located at the new studio and production facilities in the UAE capital.

• Jerry Sandusky House Arrest: Concerns Of School Could Alter Bail Conditions Of Ex-Penn State Coach

  Prosecutors asked Tuesday to have Jerry Sandusky kept indoors as part of his bail conditions, citing complaints that the former Penn State assistant football coach was seen outside and watching children in a schoolyard from the back porch of his home, where he remains under house arrest while awaiting trial on child molestation charges.

• Bashar al-Assad: Syrian violence escalates, U.S. considers options

  CNN reports that the U.S. military has begun what's called a “scoping exercise” to determine what options are on the table for possible military action in the country. Essentially, they're looking at the resources they have available and assessing the risks of various military options.

• Porn Scandal in Indian State Assembly Shocks Country - International Business Times

  Three government ministers in India resigned on Wednesday after they were caught watching pornography on a cell phone during a session of the state assembly of Karnataka.

• Amid domestic woes Tata Power explores overseas opportunities - The Economic Times

  Faced with multiple domestic sectoral woes, the country's largest private power producer, Tata Power, is actively exploring overseas opportunities for generation and distribution projects in SAARC nations, Africa, Turkey and the Middle East.

• Saudi solar deal signed with German partner | Energy, Oil and Gas | AMEinfo.com

  Saudi-based IDEA Polysilicon Co has selected Germany's Centrotherm Photovoltaic to help build a polysilicon plant in Saudi Arabia, Reuters has reported.

• Claude Lanzmann, ‘Shoah’ Director, Detained at Israeli Airport - The Daily Beast

  A French filmmaker who made a landmark documentary about the Holocaust has been detained at Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport after allegedly making an unwanted advance toward a female security agent, according to sources at the airport. The filmmaker Claude Lanzmann apparently tried to kiss and hug the agent as she accompanied him to the ticket counter after a security check

• Saudi Arabia faces rising political peril, says Maplecroft - Politics & Economics - ArabianBusiness.com

  Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, has the most uncertain political environment of 15 major growth economies including China and Russia, according to the founder of risk-assessment consultants Maplecroft. The political peril this year in 12 of those nations is decreasing, while it is rising in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Vietnam, Alyson Warhurst said at a conference in Dubai on Tuesday.

• China deepens ties to Arab Gulf states while rejecting Western curbs on business partner Iran - chicagotribune.com

  As the world's biggest energy consumer, China's roaring appetite for stable oil and gas supplies is driving its Gulf push — a relationship made clearer last month when Premier Wen Jiabao traveled to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. In Saudi Arabia, Wen specifically called for the two countries to "deepen their energy partnership" and increase trade in oil and gas.

• U.S. Jews Should Heed Top Israeli Soldiers Who Oppose Bombing Iran - The Daily Beast

  Some of Israel’s leading soldiers and spies are warning against bombing Iran. American Jews should listen to them rather than accept Netanyahu’s apocalyptic claim that Tehran’s nuclear program is an existential threat to the state

• Obama to announce $100 million plan to train new educators - The Washington Post

  President Obama will use the backdrop of a White House science fair Tuesday to highlight a nationwide shortage of math and science teachers and unveil a plan to invest $100 million to help train 100,000 new educators over the next decade.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.