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Saudi Arabia has lifted a travel ban on residents fully vaccinated against Covid-19 from 20 countries, state media said, in a move that allows the return of thousands of expatriates who have been stranded abroad for months.
The ban was issued by the Ministry of Interior in February to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
The country decided to admit vaccinated expats coming from red-list countries based on health reports as a decline in Covid-19 cases continues in Saudi Arabia, a representative for the Ministry of Interior said on Tuesday. Those arriving must have received two doses of a vaccine against Covid-19 in the kingdom before departure to their home country.
Expats who meet the criteria can return to the kingdom directly without need for quarantine in a third country as per previous rules.
The decision was welcomed by expats who expressed their relief to be reunited with their family members stranded abroad.
"I am so happy my parents and siblings can return from Lebanon, we had been worried sick due to the ongoing situation there and just want them to come back," said Nadine Ali, a Lebanese living in Jeddah.
Travel to and from the kingdom was banned in March last year due to the outbreak of the pandemic. Saudi Arabia reopened its air, land and sea borders in January but banned travel to and from countries with a high number of Covid-19 cases, where new mutations of the virus were found.
Many expats had to travel to countries on the green list first before heading to Saudi Arabia as direct flights were unavailable from a number of countries.
"At one point we had to go to Ethiopia to come back into the country from South Africa. It was impossible to come back to Saudi Arabia directly as flights were banned from South Africa. I am so glad now we don't have to quarantine in another country and my wife can just come back safely," Mr Amin Mustafa, a South African citizen living in the kingdom told The National.
The Indian, Pakistani and Indonesian embassies welcomed the decision to allow their citizens back into the country.
Saudi Arabia this month allowed vaccinated tourists to enter the country for the first time in 17 months. Last month the kingdom announced that citizens who breach Covid-19 restrictions on travelling to red-list countries could be barred from travelling for up to three years.
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
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In 2013, The National's History Project went beyond the walls to see what life was like living in Abu Dhabi's fabled fort:
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Our legal consultant
Name: Dr Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
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A list of the animal rescue organisations in the UAE
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Wicked: For Good
Director: Jon M Chu
Starring: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Ethan Slater
Rating: 4/5
England's all-time record goalscorers:
Wayne Rooney 53
Bobby Charlton 49
Gary Lineker 48
Jimmy Greaves 44
Michael Owen 40
Tom Finney 30
Nat Lofthouse 30
Alan Shearer 30
Viv Woodward 29
Frank Lampard 29
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MATCH INFO
Manchester City 1 Chelsea 0
De Bruyne (70')
Man of the Match: Kevin de Bruyne (Manchester City)
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
