Reuters: Google latest to withdraw from Saudi conference. “Pressure has mounted on Saudi Arabia since prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. resident, Washington Post columnist and critic of Saudi policies, went missing. He was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Google said in a statement that Google Cloud Chief Executive Diane Greene would not attend the Future Investment Initiative Summit scheduled to be held in Riyadh starting Oct. 23.”
Saudi Arabia
Arab News: Saudi national library of film-shooting sites launched
Arab News: Saudi national library of film-shooting sites launched. “The General Authority for Culture, represented by the Saudi Film Council, has launched the first national library of film-shooting sites in the Kingdom.”
CNET: Saudi Arabia will punish satire online mocking ‘public order, religious values’
CNET: Saudi Arabia will punish satire online mocking ‘public order, religious values’. “In Saudi Arabia, posting satire online that ‘mocks, provokes or disrupts public order, religious values and public morals’ could cost you $800,000 and up to five years in jail, the Public Prosecution, a government agency, tweeted Monday.”
BBC News: The online war between Qatar and Saudi Arabia
BBC News: The online war between Qatar and Saudi Arabia. “A year-long political conflict between the tiny, wealthy state of Qatar and its larger neighbours – including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – has been fought with a new arsenal of weapons: bots, fake news and hacking.”
MSN: Saudi Arabia to create database on camels through microchip implants
MSN: Saudi Arabia to create database on camels through microchip implants. “The Council of Ministers recently approved an ambitious project to create a national database for tracking camels via subcutaneous implanted rice-grain-size microchips, according to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA).”
Business Insider: Google’s parent company Alphabet is exploring a relationship with Saudi Arabia’s oil giant to build a ‘tech hub’ in the Middle East
Business Insider: Google’s parent company Alphabet is exploring a relationship with Saudi Arabia’s oil giant to build a ‘tech hub’ in the Middle East. “Google’s parent company Alphabet is exploring a deal with Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company Aramco to build data centers in the Middle East, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The report says Alphabet wants to help Aramco build a ‘tech hub’ in the region as competition from other companies like Amazon heats up. The tech hub could reportedly include data centers built as a part of the partnership, though the specifics of which company would construct and operate the cloud servers isn’t clear.”
Newsweek: Saudi Arabia’s Government Might Be Getting Help From Social Media Giants To Shut Down Dissent
Newsweek: Saudi Arabia’s Government Might Be Getting Help From Social Media Giants To Shut Down Dissent. “Omar Abdulaziz, a Saudi dissident who was granted political asylum in Canada, wants to know why his viral hashtag disappeared from Twitter. The 27-year-old political science student has more than 270,000 followers on Twitter. But some of his Arabic-language hashtags disappeared as soon as they started going viral, he said. Especially the ones criticizing Saudi Arabia and its crown prince, Mohammad Bin Salman.”
