Aya Batraoui
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
The Trump Organization this week launched a golf course, hotel, and residential community on the outskirts of the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
It will be built within a sprawling new development owned by Saudi Arabia's Sovereign Wealth Fund, which is run by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Sadman.
The company also announced a new Trump Plaza in Jeddah, the second to be built in the Saudi coastal city.
The Saudi company developing these projects, Dar Global, says the new projects are worth $10 billion.
The Trump Organization also has multi-billion dollar real estate projects under development with Dar Global in Qatar, Oman, and the UAE.
The projects reflect a rapid expansion of the family-run business and other financial dealings in the Gulf following President Trump's first term in office.
Aya Batraoui, NPR News, Dubai.
Saudi Arabia publishes information on executions as they happen, naming the crime and the nationality of the person killed.
Based on these announcements, Human Rights Watch and other rights groups, including the UK-based Reprieve, say foreign nationals convicted of non-violent drug crimes drove the surge in executions last year.
The rights groups say 240 out of 356 executions in the kingdom were for drug-related crimes, most of them foreign nationals.
They say 98 people were put to death on charges solely related to hash, a concentrated resin of cannabis smoked across the region illegally.
Those caught and executed are often low-level drug smugglers, and the kingdom views their sentences as effective deterrence.
A years-long rivalry in Yemen between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi burst into the open with public statements by Saudi Arabia that rebuked the United Arab Emirates' support of southern Yemeni forces, who've taken control of more terrain in the country's east in recent weeks.
The Southern Transitional Council, or STC, is backed by the UAE and is pushing for secession from Yemen's north.
A Saudi military spokesman says Saudi forces bombed shipments from the UAE of weapons, equipment and military vehicles intended for use by the SDC in Yemen.
The UAE says the shipments refer to its own Emirati forces in Yemen, not the SDC.
Saudi Arabia said in a statement it was disappointed by the UAE's actions in Yemen and its, quote, pressuring of the SDC to conduct military operations on Saudi Arabia's southern borders in Yemen, calling it a threat to the kingdom and regional security.
Aya Batraoui, NPR News, Dubai.
Israel's decision revokes the permits of groups like Oxfam, the Norwegian Refugee Council, Mercy Corps, and Doctors Without Borders, or MSF.