Saudi Arabia

Yemeni forces have arrested a Saudi man suspected of financing Al Qaeda cells in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, an Interior Ministry official said. The official said that authorities captured "the biggest and the most influential" money provider for Al Qaeda in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Hassan Hussein bin Alwan, a Saudi, was funding attacks in the two neighboring countries, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Yemeni Embassy in Washington said in a statement that Bin Alwan was captured Friday in the eastern province of Marib.

The national soccer team returned home to a heroes' welcome, complete with a brass band and bouquets, after securing a spot in the World Cup for the first time in more than 40 years. North Korea's return to soccer's most prominent tournament was secured Wednesday with a scoreless draw against Saudi Arabia. But the heirs to the "Red Mosquitoes," the underdog darlings of the 1966 World Cup, are unlikely to bask in the same international welcome in South Africa next year. Their success has been overshadowed by tensions over North Korea's rocket launches and an underground nuclear test.

BABYLON & BEYOND Swine flu concerns affect pilgrims To curtail the spread of swine flu, Arab health ministers from across the Middle East have agreed that elderly, young and chronically ill Muslims should be forbidden from traveling to Saudi Arabia for the upcoming hajj and umrah pilgrimages. The decision came after a meeting of health ministers from Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Jordan in Cairo last week, which was part of a special session of the Regional Committee for World Health Organization on the H1N1 flu virus.

Taliban militants are receiving more funding from sympathizers abroad than they are from Afghanistan's illegal drug trade, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan said. "More money is coming from the gulf than is coming from the drug trade to the Taliban," Holbrooke said at NATO headquarters in Brussels. He did not identify the countries from which donations were coming, but Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq are on the Persian Gulf.

Saudi authorities arrested 44 suspected militants with links to Al Qaeda in a yearlong sweep that also uncovered dozens of machine guns and electronic circuits for bombs, the government said. Thirty in the group hold advanced university degrees and some have received training in preparing explosives, forging travel documents and using light and heavy weapons, the Interior Ministry said. The suspects sought financing through charitable donations, officials said.

A senior prince largely credited for Saudi Arabia's anti-terrorism campaign was lightly wounded by a suicide bomber just before he was to go into a gathering of well-wishers for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the state news agency said. It was the first known assassination attempt against a member of the royal family since Saudi Arabia began its crackdown on Al Qaeda-affiliated militants after the Sept. 11 attacks. The militant who attacked the assistant interior minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayif, in Jidda had expressed his intention to give himself up to the official, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack that injured a Saudi prince and said the bomber -- a wanted militant who had fled to Yemen -- arrived on a royal jet after convincing the ruling family he wanted to surrender. Despite the attack on Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayif, his father, Interior Minister Prince Nayif ibn Abdulaziz, said the kingdom would not change its offer for militants to repent. Saudi officials have said the prince was lightly wounded in the bombing at his home in Jidda on Thursday while receiving well-wishers.

A 12-year-old Yemeni died after struggling for three days to give birth, a local human rights organization said. Fawziya Abdullah Youssef died of severe bleeding while giving birth to a stillborn in the Zahra district hospital. Child marriages are widespread in Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country, where tribal customs dominate society. More than a quarter of the country's females marry before age 15, according to a recent report by the Social Affairs Ministry. Youssef was only 11 when her father gave her to marry a 24-year-old man who works as a farmer in Saudi Arabia, said Ahmed Quraishi, chairman of Siyaj human rights organization, which promotes the rights of children in Yemen.

Much of the world knows Petra, the ancient ruin in Jordan that is celebrated in poetry as "the rose-red city, 'half as old as time,' " and which provided the climactic backdrop for "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." But far fewer people know of Madain Saleh, a similarly spectacular treasure built by the same civilization, the Nabateans. That's because it's in Saudi Arabia, where conservatives are deeply hostile to pagan, Jewish and Christian sites that predate the founding of Islam in the 7th century.

Saudi Arabia flogged a group of teenagers after a rare riot in the eastern region of the Islamic kingdom in which shops and restaurants were ransacked, a witness and local newspapers said. Human rights activists and liberals condemned the flogging, which Saudi newspapers said happened after groups of young people smashed restaurant and shop windows in Khobar on national day last week. Newspapers such as Al-Hayat and Al-Watan said about 20 teenagers had gotten at least 30 lashes each.