Subscribers to Al Jawal mobile service can now check if they have traffic tickets or fines via SMS. Just send your ID or Iqama number to 88993, and you will receive a text message whether or not you have tickets.

According to Havocscope, which is a disruption tracking service that captures the uncertainty of disruptions around the world, Saudi Arabia counterfeit US$ 10m worth of books. I wonder about the accuracy of this number. I’m no expert on this, but I know for sure that reading is not such a favorite pastime in this part of the world, and therefore I find this number hard to believe. (thx b)

“In Saudi Arabia, every one is watching you,” a young female reporter told Reuters in a recent interview. The story takes on the hurdles Saudi women journalists have to overcome to prove themselves and make their voice heard.

The Saudi Gazette has a story on a girl who made America cry. Al-Anoud Al-Eidi, a Saudi teenager studying in a summer school in Boston, directed a brief documentary about the war in Lebanon. According to the newspaper, the “film made a huge impact,” but not everyone was happy about it, as some students with an Israeli origin thought her documentary was biased and unfair to Israel and threatened her. (via xa)

Rayan has a post on what’s going on between Al Jazeera and Saudi Arabia. “Instead of trying to create discriminative calls, this is a time for us all Arabs to stand side by side in the face of this animalistic cruelty played by Bush and his strategic burden, Israel,” he says.

NY Times says Saudi Arabia kept its growing AIDS problem hidden for years, and now it begins to face this problem.

Thousands of Saudi students are to leave the country this year to study abroad thanks to a large number of scholarships from the government. Too bad none of this was available when I graduated from high school four years ago. Anyways, for these students College v2 offers some good advice on things you need to pack. A microwave is an awesome idea. How come I never considered getting one for our apartment in Riyadh?