Bahrain: no plans to ban BlackBerry services

Bahrain's foreign minister said the country has no plans to follow its Gulf neighbours in banning some BlackBerry services because security fears do not outweigh the technological benefits. His comments come as device maker Research in Motion is facing opposition by a number of countries around the world, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the Gulf, to the way its encrypted e-mail and messenger services are managed.

Bahrain's Sheik Khaled bin Ahmed Al Khalifa said the handheld devices raise legitimate concerns, but that his nation has decided that banning some of the phones' features is "not a way of dealing with it". "We're not saying there is no security concern," Sheik Khaled said. But, he added: "There are many other ways for the criminals or terrorists to communicate, so we decided we might as well live with it."

Sheik Khaled said Bahrain fully respected the decisions taken by other Gulf states regarding the devices, and declined to comment on the motivation behind their moves. However, he said his country does not see a need for a ban on BlackBerry messaging or other data services for now despite the security concerns. "It's not a way of dealing with it. We will really kind of lose a lot of communication freedom just for the sake of dealing with one matter," he said.

Local media in Bahrain have reported that authorities are focusing on the spread of some types of news and information via BlackBerry. Sheik Khaled acknowledged there were "some concerns raised" but said sharing information using the devices remains legal. Authorities were aiming instead to warn users against spreading slanderous and libelous information, he said. The tech-savvy foreign minister posted a statement to his Twitter account on Thursday that he said came from the country's crown prince, Sheik Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa. In it, he quoted Sheik Salman offering assurances no ban on messaging was planned, saying a decision to halt the service would be "ignorant, short sighted and unenforceable."

*AP

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At a glance

Global events: Much of the UK’s economic woes were blamed on “increased global uncertainty”, which can be interpreted as the economic impact of the Ukraine war and the uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Growth forecasts: Cut for 2025 from 2 per cent to 1 per cent. The OBR watchdog also estimated inflation will average 3.2 per cent this year

Welfare: Universal credit health element cut by 50 per cent and frozen for new claimants, building on cuts to the disability and incapacity bill set out earlier this month

Spending cuts: Overall day-to day-spending across government cut by £6.1bn in 2029-30

Tax evasion: Steps to crack down on tax evasion to raise “£6.5bn per year” for the public purse

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Zakat definitions

Zakat: an Arabic word meaning ‘to cleanse’ or ‘purification’.

Nisab: the minimum amount that a Muslim must have before being obliged to pay zakat. Traditionally, the nisab threshold was 87.48 grams of gold, or 612.36 grams of silver. The monetary value of the nisab therefore varies by current prices and currencies.

Zakat Al Mal: the ‘cleansing’ of wealth, as one of the five pillars of Islam; a spiritual duty for all Muslims meeting the ‘nisab’ wealth criteria in a lunar year, to pay 2.5 per cent of their wealth in alms to the deserving and needy.

Zakat Al Fitr: a donation to charity given during Ramadan, before Eid Al Fitr, in the form of food. Every adult Muslim who possesses food in excess of the needs of themselves and their family must pay two qadahs (an old measure just over 2 kilograms) of flour, wheat, barley or rice from each person in a household, as a minimum.

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