Saudi Arabia has arrested 700 militants in the past six months on suspicion of planning attacks on the country’s oil industry and other targets, the interior ministry said on Wednesday.
The figure suggests that Saudi security forces still face a significant threat from al-Qaeda despite the perception, at least in the West, that the organization has been effectively beaten in the country of Osama bin Laden’s birth.
CIA Director Michael Hayden said in an interview last month that al-Qaeda had suffered “near strategic defeat” in both Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
Saudi security forces arrested 701 people of various nationalities, said ministry spokesman, General Mansour al-Turki. Of those, 520 — divided into five cells — were still being held for involvement in the organizational and ideological plans of the “deviant ideology” — the Saudi official term for al-Qaeda. The others were released for lack of evidence.
The televised statement said those arrested had planned to revive “criminal activities” and that their leaders were based abroad. The detainees included some of Asian and African nationality. Some had planned to use car bombs to attack an oil installation and a security target in coordination with bin Laden’s Egyptian deputy, Ayman al- Zawahri, who would send fighters from Iraq, Afghanistan and North Africa to support them.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
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