Skip to main content

SAUDI ARABIA APOLOGIZES FOR THE HALF NAKED FEMALE WRESTLERS.




Riyadh, SAUDI ARABIA:
Saudi authorities apologized Saturday for videos with scantily clad female performers shown at a pro-wrestling event, highlighting the tension the ultraconservative kingdom faces in opening its society while respecting cultural and religious restrictions.



The promotional ad was aired between wrestling matches at the World Wrestling Entertainment Co.’s Greatest Royal Rumble, a pay-per-view, government-sanctioned event that Saudi authorities said was the first live wrestling event with women allowed to attend at ringside.

The audience’s men cheered as close-up clips of female wrestlers in skimpy outfits filled a big screen in King Abdullah Sports City stadium in Jeddah. The WWE event was broadcast on Saudi state television.

Saudi Arabia’s General Sports Authority, which sanctioned Friday’s event, issued a statement on Twitter apologizing for “the scenes of indecent women that featured in an ad before one of the matches.”

The authority said it would ensure such scenes didn’t appear in future events. “This is a commitment that the authority will be continuously vigilant about throughout all its different activities and events,” the Twitter message said in Arabic.

The WWE didn’t immediately provide a comment when contacted Saturday. The WWE typically has women wrestle in live matches, a popular part of its program in the U.S. and elsewhere. The company refrained from having women wrestle each other Friday night at the request of Saudi authorities, but the promotional ads depicted them.

John Cena, right, competes with Triple H during the World Wrestling Entertainment Greatest Royal Rumble event in the Saudi coastal city of Jeddah on Friday.
Image: STRINGER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY.

The controversy over the WWE video comes a week after the Saudi sports authority ordered a fitness center closed and a gym instructor fired after she appeared in a promotional video wearing form-fitting workout clothing.
The sports authority said then that it “affirms its efforts to stop any overstepping aimed at harming society and breeching its modesty.”

The incidents show how the kingdom’s cultural boundaries under Islamic law are difficult to ignore, even as its leadership tries to loosen up and create opportunities for a population that is 70% under the age of 30 years old.

The WWE matches were meant to show the strides Saudi Arabia is making in building an entertainment industry after decades of enforcing strict interpretations of Islam that included banning cinemas and limiting the mixing of genders in public.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 32-year-old day-to-day ruler of the kingdom, has sought to soften the image of his country by opening movie theaters, planning futuristic new cities and giving rights to women. This year, women have been allowed to attend soccer matches for the first time in decades and will soon be allowed to drive.

Friday night’s event was the first time women were allowed to attend a live pro-wrestling event. Pro-wrestling has been a cult hit in Saudi Arabia, though female fans were often frowned on for enjoying a spectacle that involved half-naked men bashing each other.



The sports authority’s statement Saturday was likely a pre-emptive attempt to subdue any backlash against the WWE event. The Saudi government and he WWE said they signed a 10-year agreement to produce events in the kingdom.

SOURCE:

Comments

Post a Comment

POPULAR NEWS FROM THIS SITE:

CUBA CLAIMS CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER IS FIDEL CASTRO'S SON.

The suicide note left by Fidel Castro’s eldest son has rocked the Cuban nation this week, with the most astonishing revelation being the claim that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was his half-brother and the son of the late Fidel Castro. The handwritten note left by Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, 68, the eldest of Fidel Castro’s children, appears to confirm the longstanding rumor in Cuba that Fidel Castro fathered Justin Trudeau after a public tryst with Margaret Trudeau in 1970. “ Castro Diaz-Balart, who had been attended by a group of doctors for several months due to a state of profound depression, committed suicide this morning ,”  Cubadebate website reported. The death of the high-profile government nuclear scientist, also known as “Fidelito”, or Little Fidel, because of how much he looked like his father, stunned the nation, however it is his “ explosive ” suicide note that has set tongues wagging in Havana. Amid a wide-ranging barrage of compl...
21 comments
Read more

MALARIA VACCINE PROVES HIGHLY EFFECTIVE IN BURKINA FASO.

A vaccine against malaria has been shown to be highly effective in trials in Africa, holding out the real possibility of slashing the death toll of a disease that kills 400,000 mostly small children every year. The vaccine, developed by scientists at the Jenner Institute of Oxford University, showed up to 77% efficacy in a trial of 450 children in Burkina Faso over 12 months. The hunt for a malaria vaccine has been going on the best part of a century. One, the Mosquirix vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline, has been through lengthy clinical trials but is only partially effective, preventing 39% of malaria cases and 29% of severe malaria cases among small children in Africa over four years. It is being piloted by the World  Health  Organization in parts of Kenya, Ghana and Malawi. The Oxford vaccine is the first to meet the WHO goal of 75% efficacy against the mosquito-borne parasite disease. Larger trials are now beginning, involving 4,800 children in four countries. Prof ...
Post a Comment
Read more

MINERS IN NAMIBIA DISCOVER SHIPWRECK LOADED $13 MILLION WORTH OF GOLD.

Image: Dieter Noli. Diamond miners working off the coast of Africa were beyond surprised when they discovered a 500-year-old shipwreck teeming with gold worth $13 million and other treasures. The ship, aptly named ‘Bom Jesus’ or ‘Good Jesus,’ was like a miracle to the miners. Bom Jesus was first identified and discovered by geologists working for the mining company De Beers in 2008. It was found off the coast of Namibia near Oranjemund. Image: Dieter Noli. According to experts, Bom Jesus is from the Golden era of Portuguese explorers who set sail in all directions in search of new lands to colonize. The ship left Lisbon in 1533 under the supervision of Sir Francisco de Noronha. But on its way to India, it mysteriously vanished. Before the discovery, the miners were draining an artificial salt lake. As the lake dried out, many lost ships were found at the bottom of the lake. Bom Jesus was among them, and it is considered the oldest of all ...
1 comment
Read more

BEES 'ARRESTS' SUSPECTED THIEVES IN UGANDA.

Bees 'handcuffed' one of the suspects around the wrist, while another had the TV set reportedly stuck on his hands.  Image: Daily Monitor. Kampala, UGANDA: Two burglars who are suspected to have stolen a television set in Sofiia village, Busia Town in eastern Uganda are in police custody after they were attacked by a swarm of bees. Like police would handcuff a suspect, a swarm of bees mobbed the hands of one of the suspects, while another reportedly had the TV set stuck on his hands as they returned the stolen items to where they had been picked from. Ms Rashida Jowelia, the owner of the property, said her TV set was stolen from her house last Friday, but she decided to seek the services of a medicine man in Sofia Village rather than report the matter to police. The suspects were identified as Wycliffe Kinara and Richard Duki, both Kenyan nationals from Nakuru. Bees 'handcuffed' one of them around the wrist, while another had the TV set reportedly stuck on his hands...
Post a Comment
Read more

THOUSANDS OF FAKE COVID-19 VACCINES HAVE BEEN SEIZED IN SOUTH AFRICA & CHINA.

File photo - Interpol Secretary-General Jurgen Stock Image: africanews. Lyon, FRANCE: Police have seized thousands of counterfeit coronavirus vaccines in South Africa and China and have made more than 80 arrests after a criminal network selling fake jabs was uncovered, Interpol said on Wednesday. In South Africa, police officers found 400 ampoules of fake vaccines, equivalent to around 2,400 doses, at a warehouse just outside Johannesburg. A large quantity of fake 3M masks was also found and police arrested three Chinese nationals and a Zambian national. Police in South Africa seized hundreds of fake COVID-19 vaccines and made several arrests following a global alert issued by INTERPOL. In China, police successfully identified a network selling counterfeit COVID-19 vaccines, raided the manufacturing premises, resulting in the arrest of some 80 suspects, and seized more than 3,000 fake vaccines on the scene. The investigation was supported and coordinated by Interpol’s Illicit Goods ...
Post a Comment
Read more

MAN SAVED FROM POISONING BY DRINKING 15 CANS OF BEER.

Doctors in north-central Vietnam used 15 cans of beer to save the life of a man suffering from alcohol poisoning and yes, you read that correctly. Nguyen Van Nhat, 48, was taken to Quang Tri General Hospital on Christmas after allegedly consuming alcoholic drinks that contained methanol, a highly toxic form of alcohol. So doctors immediately gave him three cans of beer. Le Van Lam, head of the hospital’s intensive care unit, explained that the beer was administered in order to slow down the rate at which Nhat’s liver was processing the methanol, according to Vietnamese newspaper Tuổi Trẻ. Nguyen Van Nhat is treated for methanol poisoning at a hospital in Quang Tri Province in north-central Vietnam. Image: Tuoi Tre Essentially, there are two types of alcohol: ethanol and methanol. The former is a primary ingredient in both fermented and distilled alcoholic beverages—the stuff that makes you feel drunk in small doses and sick in large doses—although it doesn’t typi...
Post a Comment
Read more

DEREK CHAUVIN TO BE CHARGED OVER ANOTHER 2017 INCIDENT.

New York, U.S: The Department of Justice is reportedly considering charging Derek Chauvin in a 2017 incident involving a Black teenager that came to light while prosecutors were preparing the George Floyd murder case against the former Minneapolis cop. The DOJ’s investigation focuses on footage of Chauvin striking a 14-year-old so hard that he needed stitches to close the wound, then kneeling on him for almost 17 minutes — mostly putting pressure on his upper back — as the youngster complained he couldn’t breathe, ABC News reported. Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes before the 46-year-old Black man died May 25, 2020 after begging for air. Chauvin was convicted of his murder Tuesday.  Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder on Tuesday. (AP) A state prosecutor wrote of the 2017 incident that “videos show a far more violent and forceful treatment of this child than Chauvin describes in his report,” yet no action was taken against him. ABC News reported t...
Post a Comment
Read more

LECTURER ARRESTED FOR GIFTING BOMB TO NEWLY-WED COUPLE, KILLING THE GROOM.

The wedding of Soumya and Reema in the city of Bolangir in India’s eastern state of Odisha was solemnized in February this year like any other Indian wedding, except for a surprise gift they received five days after the wedding, which ended their short-lived marital bliss. New Delhi (Sputnik) — Police in India's eastern state of Odisha claim to have cracked the sensational parcel bomb wedding gift case after two months of investigation. The police said that after looking at the many aspects of the case, they zeroed in on Punjilal Meher, a colleague of the groom's mother who has reportedly confessed to have packed a bomb and sent to it the newly-wed couple wishing them a happy married life. The incident took place on February 23 this year, five days after Soumya and Reema tied the knot. They received a parcel from an unknown sender. When opened, the parcel exploded, killing Soumya on the spot, while Reema and another family member were severely burnt. The Odish...
Post a Comment
Read more

KENYAN WOMAN ARRESTED OVER MISSING DUTCH BUSINESS TYCOON HUSBAND.

Dutch tycoon Tob Cohen and his wife Sarah Wairimu Kamotho. He has gone missing and the wife arrested. Nairobi, KENYA: The wife of a missing Dutch national Tob Cohen was on Wednesday arrested as police investigate his disappearance. Ms Sarah Wairimu Kamotho was arrested after police had picked and interrogated her for the third time over the disappearance of Mr Kohen on July 19, 2019 from their Lower Kabete home, Nairobi. Cohen is yet to be found since he went missing from their home in spite of efforts by authorities and his family to trace him. Police say they have no clue on what happened to the golf lover who had an ongoing divorce case in court and had filed assault claims against his wife of 12 years. Mrs Wairimu’s lawyer Philip Murgor said his client was innocent and did not understand why police arrested her. “I don’t know why they are arresting her yet she is also concerned about the whereabouts of her husband. She is innocent,” he said. Mrs Wai...
Post a Comment
Read more

FORMER PUSSYCAT DOLL CLAIMS BAND WAS A "PROSTITUTION RING"

Kaya Jones claims the Pussycat Dolls were operated as a "prostitution ring" during her time in the group. The 33-year-old star joined the girl band as a teenager in 2003 and has now claimed entertainment executives took advantage of members, alleging they were "all abused" and had pressure put on them to "sleep with whoever they say". KAYA JONES. In a series of tweets, Jones wrote: "Tried to silence us, made us stronger. Tried to drug us, but we were wide awake. Tried to blacklist us, but fans followed. We aren't kids anymore. "The children you messed with that survived the abuse, we are adults now. Are you ready old ones to fight? Cause you all are looking mighty old. "My truth. I wasn't in a girl group. I was in a prostitution ring. Oh & we happened to sing & be famous. While everyone who owned us made the $ "How bad was it? People ask. Bad enough that I walked away from my dreams, bandmates & a 1...
Post a Comment
Read more