Tag Archives: Saudi Arabia

40 year-old Saudi Arabian diplomat Bander Yahya A. Alzahrani has been ordered to serve his jail sentence of 26 months and a week despite his attempt to defer his sentence for the third time in a row.

Minister Yaacob Ibrahim has taken to Facebook to announce that haj places for pilgrims from Singapore will be increased to 800 this year, which is an increase of 120 from the 680 spots available last year, and 200 short of the target set earlier this month.

I refer to the article “DR M DARE TO HSIEN LOONG: HAS S’PORE BECOME A MONEY-LAUNDERING HUB? TELL THE WORLD HOW YOU CAN UNFREEZE NAJIB’S RM2.6BIL & SEND IT BACK TO SAUDI” (Malaysia Chronicle, Jan 27). It states that “Dr Mahathir Mohamad has roped Singapore into the RM2.6 billion donation issue after the attorney-general cleared Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak of any wrongdoing.

In a Facebook post on Friday evening, Minister for Muslim Affairs Yaacob Ibrahim said that he had met with Saudi Arabia's Hajj Minister, Dr Bandar Bin Mohamed Al-Hajjar, on Thursday to discuss arrangements for the upcoming pilgrimage in September. Readers who had seen Yaacob's post, however, were left confused on whether there would any increase in the Hajj quota this year as he did not mention whether Dr Bandar had agreed to any increase in the Hajj quota.

The latest information comes from researchers from King Fahd Medical Research Center in Saudi Arabia, who collected three air samples from a camel barn. The researchers previously found MERS in a camel from that barn the same time that its owner also tested positive. The owner eventually died from the infection. After analyzing the air samples taken from the barn, the scientists found one strain of MERS RNA, the viral genome. The barn air tested positive for MERS the exact same day the camel also tested positive. The virus from the air sample was also identical to the virus found in the nasal samples taken from the infected camel and its owner.