Saudi in fresh crackdown on colourful female gowns

by Emirates 24/7 News

Saudi Arabia’s feared Islamic police mounted a fresh campaign against clothes shops in one of the Gulf Kingdom’s largest cities to stop them from selling colourful gowns to women, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice raided many shops in the western town of Taif and confiscated a large quantity of ornamented women’s gowns, Sabq online Arabic language daily said.

“The Commission members made dealers write a statement pledging not to sell these gowns again…many other deals had shut their shops and fled just before the Commission inspectors raided the market.”

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Update: Israel Asks Saudi Arabia to Free ‘Spy’ Vulture

by Meredith Jessup

After police authorities in Saudi Arabia “arrested” a vulture for allegedly spying for Israel, Israeli scientists are asking the Saudi government to release their bird.

The vulture prompted Saudis to take action against to thwart the “Zionist plot” after authorities discovered it had been tagged with a transmitter labeled “Tel Aviv University.” But Ohad Hatzofe, an Israeli avian ecologist, told the UK’s Telegraph that the bird was only carrying a GPS tracker so scientists could track its movement, noting that the bird may not even have originated in Israel.

“This bird didn’t stay in Israel in the breeding season, so it might be a Turkish bird, it might be a Jordanian bird, or even be Saudi Arabian.”

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Vulture arrested for spying after flying into Saudi Arabia

by Daily Mail Reporter

Authorities in Saudi Arabia arrested a suspected Mossad spy when they captured a vulture. The bird, tagged at Tel Aviv University for a science study, flew into Saudi territory, where it was nabbed, according to Haaretz News Service. The bird was wearing a transmitter and leg bracelet as part of a migration research project, but the tags bore the words 'Tel Aviv University' and prompted suspicion. Residents and local reporters told Saudi Arabia's Al-Weeam newspaper that the Israeli bird seemed as though it could be a 'Zionist plot.' News of the bird's arrest went viral and people on Arab-language blogs insisted Zionists had trained and released the vulture to spy.

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