250 Saudi women to get jobs as part of SR500m project launched in Riyadh

Riyadh, Apr 21: About 250 Saudi women will work in new manufacturing jobs as part of a major SR500 million-expansion program under a Saudi-Japanese joint venture.

Japanese Ambassador Norihiro Okuda, Mahdy Katbe, of Unicharm Gulf Hygienic Industries Limited, and Takahisa Takahara, president and CEO of Unicharm launched the project.

Katbe told Arab News that his company currently employs 73 local women, 30 percent of whom have special needs. In a bid to empower women, he said, women workers have been given all needed facilities and services and they are allowed to bring their infants and keep them at the site while they work.

Unicharm Gulf Hygienic Industries is a joint venture company between Al-Murjan Group and The Japanese Unicharm Corporation, a manufacturer and distributor of health products. Unicharm’s annual sales exceeds $2.5 billion.

Katbe said that his company maintains more than the 30 percent Saudi workers on its workforce, as required by the government.

The new factory will bring in the latest technology to produce diapers for babies and adults.

Okuda said that the bilateral relations between Japan and the Kingdom have been further stepped up following the recent visit of King Salman and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Tokyo. He pointed out that the private sectors of the two countries are working together to help the Kingdom achieve its 2030 Vision.

The envoy estimated the bilateral trade to be in the range of $50 billion and the balance of trade in favor of Saudi Arabia since it exports oil and petro-chemical products to the value of $40 billion.

Saudi Arabia and Japan have become close strategic partners as well as strong allies with progressively growing commercial and cultural links, he said.

He said plans are underway to transfer Japanese technology on desalination projects to the Kingdom.

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188 Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli army in Gaza

News Network

November 10,2024

The media office in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli regime has been waging a genocidal war since last October, says as many as 188 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the onset of the brutal military onslaught.

The office provided the figure on Saturday, naming four journalists as the most recent victims of the onslaught.

It identified the foursome as Zahraa Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Ahmad Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Mustafa Khadr Bahar, and Abdel Rahman Khadr Bahar.

The office said it “strongly condemns the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation and holds it fully responsible for committing this heinous crime.”

“We call on the international community, international organizations, and those involved in journalistic work worldwide to take action against the occupation, pursue it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, and pressure it to halt the genocide and the targeted killings of Palestinian journalists,” it said.

Earlier in the day, the office said the Israeli regime had bombed the tents sheltering journalists and displaced persons at the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza for the ninth consecutive time.

The atrocity that claimed the lives of two people and injured 26 others came as part of “the genocidal crimes committed by the Israeli occupation army against hospitals, civilians, and displaced persons,” it said.

The media office held the regime and the United States, its biggest ally, as well as other countries aiding the genocide fully responsible for such systematic crimes.

At least 43,552 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 102,765 others wounded since the launch of the war that followed a retaliatory operation by Gaza’s resistance groups.

The fatalities include 44 people, who were killed across the coastal sliver, in the most recent phase of the military onslaught.

As many as 24 of the victims were killed in the northern part of the territory, where the regime has markedly intensified its deadly attacks for weeks.

They included an eight-year-old child and a five-year-old one, who lost their lives after Israeli warplanes targeted a group of minors filling up jerry cans with water alongside their mother at the Jabalia Refugee camp.

Gaza’s heath ministry, meanwhile, said a number of victims remained under the rubble and in the streets following Israeli airstrikes, saying ambulances and civil defense teams could not reach them due to the sheer extent of the destruction caused by the raids and obstruction caused by the regime.

Also on Saturday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, a United Nations-backed assessment, warned that famine was looming in northern Gaza amid escalated Israeli aggression and the regime’s near-total siege of the targeted areas.

The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of "an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip."

On October 17, the body projected that the number of people in Gaza facing "catastrophic" food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000, or 16 percent of the population.

The IPC report classified that figure as Phase 5 -- a situation when "starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident."

The Israeli military, however, questioned the report's credibility.

"To date, all assessments by the IPC have proven incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground," the army said in a statement, denouncing "partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests."

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