Ethiopian maid stabs Saudi woman to death

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 JEDDAH: Security officers in Al-Khafji arrested an Ethiopian housemaid on Tuesday evening after she stabbed her elderly sponsor to death.
Eastern Province police spokesman Col. Ziad Al-Ruqaiti said Al-Khafji police received a report at 4 p.m. on Tuesday from Civil Defense directing the team to open the door of the house in which an elderly woman lived with her housemaid.
“Upon their entry to the home, they found the elderly woman had been stabbed numerous times and the housemaid was not home,” he said.
He said an immediate and intensive search of the neighborhood was launched until the housemaid was found shortly thereafter in a state of confusion hiding in a nearby location. “Police immediately launched investigations into the crime, and the housemaid acknowledged that she killed her sponsor by stabbing her because of a dispute between them,” said Al-Ruqaiti.

Grand mufti seeks death for killers of martyred sergeant

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•  
• Grand Mufti Abdulaziz Al-Asheikh
  
   RIYADH: Grand Mufti Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al-Asheikh has called on the Ministry of Interior (MoI) to implement the death penalty against the perpetrators in the murder of martyr Sergeant Badr Al-Rashidi.
  “Those involved in the murder of Saudi martyr Sergeant Badr Al-Rashidi belong to a deviant group whose aim is to sow terrorism among Muslims,” he said during an interview with a local TV channel.
  The identities of the perpetrators were already known and the one who was martyred was a member of the Special Emergency Force in Qassim Region.
  Al-Asheikh added that the terrorists killed in cold blood and therefore have to pay for their atrocious deed with no less than their life.
  “They should also be killed and crucified as well as their descendants and their hands and feet cut off so that they could no longer pose threat to society,” he said.
  He added that the implementation of the death penalty will deter others with “violent streak of mind to follow in the footsteps of terrorists.”
  He also issued a warning regarding the impact of deviant groups in the minds of the young people.
  “Everyone, particularly the youth, should be guarded against deviant groups such as Daesh whose main goal is to commit terrorist attacks and cause bloodshed among Muslims,” he said.
  He added that killing a Muslim is “a great scourge which shows the corruption of faith and weakness of belief.”
  “The aim of Daesh’s followers is not reform like what they announce and disseminate but the shedding of the blood of Muslims,” Al-Asheikh said.
  The Grand Mufti added that the deviant group strikes fear in the hearts of Muslims and destroy their entity and eliminate their faith.
  

Modi’s KSA visit to focus on economy, security

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  Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

 RIYADH: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to begin his official visit to the Kingdom on April 2.
The announcement of premier’s planned visit to the Kingdom made headlines in Indian media on Sunday.
Modi, 66, is the first prime minister belonging to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to visit the Kingdom.
“The details of the prime minister’s itinerary are being worked out…. and hence I can’t share the details of his visit at this stage,” said an Indian official via phone from New Delhi.
He, however, confirmed that the visit to Riyadh is part of the three-nation tour, that will begin on March 30.
The Riyadh-based Indian embassy refused to share information about the Modi’s visit, saying that the mission will disclose details once they will be officially intimated.
It is widely believed that Modi’s trip to the Kingdom will mainly focus on commercial ties, trade, and security issues that hampering peace and security in the Middle East and the regions in its neighborhood.
According to ‘Indian Express’, an Indian daily newspaper, “the Indian premier will travel to Saudi Arabia as part of his three-nation trip from March 30 during which he will also visit Washington to attend Nuclear Security Summit.”
Starting his visit with Belgium on March 30 for India-EU Summit, Modi will travel to Washington on March 31 before his two-day bilateral visit from April 2 to Saudi Arabia.
The Indian premier’s visit comes nearly six years after last prime ministerial visit to Riyadh, and it assumes significance given the current turmoil in the Middle East.
Apart from being India’s largest supplier of crude oil, accounting for almost one fifth of its need, the Kingdom is also India’s fourth largest trading partner.
Saudi Arabia has the largest Indian diaspora, whose number currently exceeds 2.8 million.
On regional level also, India is also engaged with countries in the Middle East.
To this end, it is important to note that a free trade agreement between GCC and India have been planned.
This agreement, once endorsed, will largely expand economic and investment links between the two regions, mainly the Kingdom and the UAE as New Delhi’s largest Gulf trading partners.
On the other hand, Arab League and India are working closely on a range of subjects.
They have vowed to combat terrorism and called for developing a strategy to “eliminate” its sources and its funding as India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj made a strong pitch for delinking religion from terrorism, while she was in Cairo and Bahrain recently.

Construction sector reports highest number of injuries

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 JEDDAH: The construction sector has recorded the highest number of work-related injuries for 2015 with 26,982 injuries out of a total of 50.787 in nine different sectors.
A report by the General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI) revealed that the trade sector came in second place with 9,690 work injuries; then the manufacturing sector with 7,420 work injuries.
The distribution of work-related injuries in collisions totaled 14,902 cases followed by falling accidents with 14.451 cases.
According to GOSI, a work injury is one that occurs to the subscriber during work or due to work. Moreover, every accident that occurs to the subscriber on his way to work from his residence and vice versa is considered a work injury.
Additionally, when subscribers are going from their workplace to the place where they usually eat or pray or vice versa, those are also considered a work injury. Also, a work injury occurs when a subscriber is moving due to a task entrusted to him by his employer, as well as diseases that are proven to be a result of work.
Also, the compensation shall be provided to the injured subscriber or for family members to claim:
Medical care required by the physical condition of the subscriber as well as daily allowances for temporary inability to work if the injured becomes unable to work because of the injury; the monthly revenue and compensation for complete or partial permanent disability resulting from the injury; the monthly returns for family members in addition to the grant given to the family of the injured or in the case of his death.
The GOSI subscribers are not entitled to anything from in compensation unless the injury occurred after the completion of registration at the insurance office.

350,000 Saudi women are employed in private sector

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 JEDDAH: Recent statistics from the Ministry of Labor show that the Saudi private sector employed more than 350,000 women at the end of 2015, and the figure is expected to reach 450,000 by the end of 2016, a local publication reports.
According to sources quoted in the local media, the increase in female employment has been ascribed to the response made by specialized educational institutions to the needs of the labor market. These institutions introduced a set of programs and curricula capable of meeting the needs of the market. The content of their courses was chosen to conform to the needs of the market with a particular emphasis on women’s goals.
According to Hala Halawani, the director of an institute of design in Riyadh, the main objective of the institute is to enable women to receive qualitative knowledge so they can get the required skills to become international designers, and meet the needs of the Saudi labor market. “Overall, the aim is for them to become professionals in the industry,” she concluded.
Speaking about the general curriculum of study and the links with the needs of the labor market in the Kingdom, she said: “We continuously introduce international educational programs to provide women with the necessary skills to enter the labor market and compete in the world of entrepreneurship. This will help to support the national economy and provide job opportunities for girls after graduation. Recently, we opened a laboratory for jewelry design which follows international specifications for quality, for example, and we also developed a photography laboratory in line with international standards.”
She said that her institute offers training in fields required by the labor market that are not based on studies alone but on the realities on the ground. “We receive many requests for employment for our students while they are still studying. International forecasts indicate that the design industry ranked third on the list of the expected international demand for specializations by 2020,” she added.
On the social responsibility of her establishment, she added: “Although it has been only a year since we established the business, we began from the first day of operations by assuming our social responsibility and allocating study positions free of charge for talented students.”
The Ministry of Labor said in a recent report that securing suitable jobs for women was one of the most important goals for Saudi society. The ministry said it works with its partners in the labor system to provide a work environment that is safe for women and compatible with Sharia standards.
Confirming this, the ministry recently held a training workshop at the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry during which it reiterated that the labor system — represented by the Ministry of Labor, the Human Resources Development Fund (HADAF), the General Organization for Technical Education and Vocational Training and the General Organization for Social Insurance — works as one unified system to support the employment of Saudis in the private sector.

Danish delegation targets Saudi trade opportunities

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• 
  Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman welcomes Crown Prince of Denmark Frederik André Henrik before talks in Riyadh on Sunday. King Salman hosted a banquet in honor of the crown princeA A

RIYADH: Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman held wide-ranging talks with Danish Crown Prince Frederik Andre Henrik here on Sunday.
The two leaders reviewed bilateral relations while discussing various aspects of cooperation between the two countries and agreed on ways to further enhance relations.
King Salman hosted a banquet luncheon for Crown Prince Frederik and his accompanying delegation at his palace.
Crown Prince Frederik and his wife Princess Mary, accompanied by a huge delegation of senior ministers including foreign minister Kristian Jensen and high-ranking government officials and senior business executives, are on a three-day visit to Saudi Arabia.

They were received at the King Khalid International Airport by Riyadh Gov. Prince Faisal bin Bandar.
A Danish embassy official said that the crown prince is scheduled to take part in a number of business activities with focus on strengthening trade for Danish business concerns in several areas such as sustainability, health, food products, education and design.
Crown Prince Frederik, along with Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Zamil, chairman of the Council of Saudi Chambers, is scheduled to jointly open the Saudi-Danish business forum on Monday.
Senior executives from about 44 Danish companies and several interest groups including Confederation of Danish Industry (CDI) and the Danish Agriculture and Food Council (DAFC) to promote Denmark’s export interests will attend the forum.
The Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry (RCCI), in collaboration with the CDI and DAFC, will host the Saudi-Danish Business Forum and Exhibition at a hotel in Riyadh. Danish companies will display their products.
The Danish Crown Prince and his accompanying delegation also visited the historic Al-Dirriyah area. Notably, the Turaif district in the historic area was declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 2010.
Al-Dirriyah Gov. Prince Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Abdulrahman welcomed the Danish royals in the historic area. They toured the neighborhood and were briefed on various development projects.
Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir, meanwhile, received his Danish counterpart at the foreign ministry office and discussed bilateral relations and the current situation in the Gulf and Middle East.
The Danish Crown Prince is scheduled to take part in a number of business activities with focus on strengthening trade for Danish business concerns in several areas such as sustainability, health, food products, education and design, a Danish embassy official said.
Trade relations between the two countries have witnessed remarkable growth in the recent past with further development in trade and investment with the trade exchanges reaching SR2,840 million by the end of 2015. The Danish royals are scheduled to leave for Qatar after their 3-day visit to the Kingdom.

Binladin workers’ salary issue resolved

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 JEDDAH: The Ministry of Labor has reached an agreement to resolve the problem of Saudi Binladin Group employees who have been protesting against salary delays.
The decision was taken at a meeting between representatives of the Ministry of Labor (MoL), Binladin group and police in Makkah recently, local media reported on Friday.
Around 2,000 engineers, management staff and workers have reportedly not been paid salaries for four months, leading to an agitation by them.
Khaled Aba Al Khiel, representative of the MoL in Makkah region, is following up on workers’ complaints and will take necessary measures to end the crisis, the report said, quoting sources.
Frustrated with the delay in payment of salaries, more than 1,000 workers protested outside the company headquarters last week.
The MoL signed a trilateral agreement, one of which allows worker to stay at hom until the salaries are paid by the company after deducting the period of absence.
The second option allows anyone who wants to leave the company can seek the settlement of dues and make the final exit. The third choice for workers and staff is that can have a sponsorship transfer.

Nitaqat: 1.7 million Saudis hold private sector jobs

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 RIYADH: The number of Saudi nationals in the private sector, which was only 700,000 in 2011, reached 1.7 million by the end of 2015.
Labor Minister Mufrej Al-Haqabani attributed the increase to the Nitaqat program launched in 2012.
Addressing a meeting at the Qussaim Literary Club recently, the minister said that a new service was being launched to solve labor disputes.
“With the Marina system there will no longer be a need to attend the headquarters in Riyadh to talk about the case and adjudicate on it,” Al-Haqabani was quoted as saying in the local media.
The long-distance lawsuit service will be extended to other cities soon, he said.
Also, around 800 long-distance litigation cases were registered in 47 cities and governorates across the Kingdom benefiting 279 people since the launch of the program.
Explaining the stages of electronic development at the Ministry of Labor, Al-Haqabani clarified that 96 percent of cases were made electronically and 4 percent through the offices across the Kingdom.
The minister said that the Doroub Program for electronic training through Hadaf is in the interest of the national labor, which has made great progress.
It has provided guidance to 39,000 trainees so far, with 480 receiving on-job training. Accredited certificates have been distributed to 4,000 trainees since the launch of the program.

New 3D technology for comfortable smart phone viewing

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BEIJING: Scientists have developed a new display with three-dimensional visual effects, which will enable viewers to watch a 3 D movie on their smartphone without getting a headache or feeling nauseous.

 

The device is based on a "super multi-view technique" which works to reduce viewer discomfort, and also greatly decreases the required number of microdisplays, which makes a compact design possible.

 

"There are many causes for 3D-viewing discomfort, but the most substantial one is the vergence-accomodation conflict," said Lilin Liu from Sun Yan-Sen University in China.

 

Vergence-accommodation conflict is a mismatch between the point at which the eyes converge on an image and the distance to which they focus when viewing 3D images, researchers said.

 

Human eyes are separated by about six centimetres, which means that when we look at an object, the two eyes see slightly different images.

 

Our brain directs both eyes to the same object and the distance at which the eyes' sight lines cross is technically called "vergence distance."

 

Meanwhile, our brain adjusts the focus of the lens within each eye to make the image sharp and clear on the retina. The distance to which the eye is focused is called "the accommodative distance."

 

Failure to converge leads to double images, while mis-accommodation results in blurry images.

 

In natural viewing, human's vergence and accommodation responses are correlated with each other and adjust simultaneously. In other words, vergence and accommodation distance are almost always the same - that is why we can always see an object clearly and comfortably.

 

Conventional 3D displays try to mimic the natural viewing by creating images with varying binocular difference, which simulates vergence changes in the natural 3D landscape.

 

But the accommodative distance remains unchanged at the display distance, resulting in the so-called vergence-accommodation conflict that causes viewer discomfort.

 

"Conventional 3D displays usually deliver some views of the displayed spatial spot to a single eye pupil. That is why accommodative distance remains fixed on the display screen and cannot adjust simultaneously as vergence distance does, causing vergence-accommodation conflict," said Liu.

 

Researchers' solution is to project numerous 2D perspective views to viewpoints with intervals smaller than the pupil diametre of the eye. This means the device can deliver at least two different views to a single eye pupil.

 

The prototype system consists of 11 elementary projecting units. Each projecting unit is constructed by an organic light-emitting diode micro-display, a rectangular projecting lens, two vertical baffles and a group of gating apertures (liquid crystal panel) attached to the projecting lens.

 

To test viewers' reactions to the prototype system, eight subjects were asked to observe a displayed 3D image of an apple in the lab environment and no headache or discomfort was reported. The findings were published in the journal Optics Express.

Google India launches AMP for faster web access on mobiles

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NEW DELHI: Technology giant Google has rolled out a new open source initiative, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) that will allow web pages on mobile phones to load four times faster using ten times less data.

 

The initiative is supported by publishing houses like Network18, NDTV, India Today, Hindustan Times and DNA among others in India, Google said in a statement.

 

"Access to information is at the heart of Google's mission. Unfortunately, today, the mobile web isn't living up to the expectations people have for getting the information they need, particularly when it comes to speed," Google VP Engineering Search David Besbris said.

 

AMP will allow publishers to deliver content to readers faster with a uniform experience. Citing research data, Google said users abandon websites after just three seconds if the content doesn't load quickly.

 

AMP does away with such problems as it helps improve the mobile ecosystem for users, content providers, creators, advertisers and platforms, it added.

 

Launched in October last year, AMP are just like any other HTML page, but with a limited set of allowed technical functionality that is defined and governed by the open source AMP spec.

 

Google said mobile is influencing and in many cases, defining Indian users' first experience with the Internet.

 

With over 200 million mobile Internet users in India, mobile captured 60 per cent share of all shopping related queries and over 50 per cent share of all travel related queries.

 

Even for YouTube, over 60 per cent of views were now coming from mobile. In the classifieds space, online job listings saw revival with over 41 per cent job related searches coming from mobile phones, Google said.

Spend more time reading news, less time waiting for pages to load. #AMPproject https://t.co/ku5I7Q399f pic.twitter.com/O5lTG3Galy