King Abdullah has died: Any one in Saudi?

[partialderivative]

I am in Oman, three days of mourning have been announced, closing schools and government buildings.

I can only imagine things are very unsettled in SA.

I hope thins are stable.

DH there - golf tournament still went ahead this morning, but the dinner at the embassy has been cancelled. Three days of mourning there too - was hoping for a week so he could come home for a sneaky visit!

Waiting to see how things progress today.

Is it the custom in SA to give clemency to prisoners?
Could they use this to release some hight profile prisoners like Raif Badawi?

One can only hope Molly.

He was recorded as trying to rein in some of the powers of the clerics, but it is such a conservative regime that they feel at liberty to do whatever they want, and pay little regard to international sentiment.
Well that's the way it seems to me.

Desertmum.
I thought there would have been far more than 3 days in SA, especially as two of those are the weekend. Our commercial radio stations have been playing Koranic prayers all day, probably not by choice.

Here in Egypt we have 7 days of mourning. I suppose it is pretty obvious why. I can't really see any difference except for the extra prayer after Friday prayers and the black band on the television screens.

MIL has just told me that Jordan has announced 40 days of mourning. Competitive mourning, anyone?

What on earth will they be doing for 40 days!?

What if another leader dies in the meantime?

Competitive mourning indeed.

in the first few months of 1999 three ME leaders died (Bahrain, Jordan and Oman) - the kids were off school almost as much as they were there - so was a bit surprised at only three days. But they only had three days off when the last King died.

I guess it might change, but doesn't look as though we will see DH this week.

It won't be too long before the next one.. They are hardly young ??

I'm not sure partialderivative. Yesterday here in Egypt all the normal programmes on state and private tv channels were replaced with long discussions of King Abdullah's virtues. This morning we mostly have a choice of Quran or live video from Mecca.

3 days in uae with somber music on all radio stations and live music cancelled

No day off on Sunday though

Talking to people here though, people are a little unsettled by this because whilst King Abdullah's policies weren't agreed with, you knew where hestood on evetything. Now, who knows. With the price of oil unstable and the threat from ISIS, it's a little scary that there's a new leader in the region.

3 days morning here in Qatar. No days off though and the radio's playing normal music. Few events cancelled at the weekend but that's about it.

I am concerned that the Sultan in Oman is not very well.

He has ruled here for 40+ years and has dragged the country (or Sultanate to be more accurate) from the middle ages to being one of the most progressive places in the ME, but there are a lot of hard line conservatives waiting in the background, and there is no obvious heir to the throne.

The threat of terrorism at the minute is a little scary. However, Saudi security has been told to shoot anyone breaching the border on sight, and they seem to be very astute.

With recent attacks in France, Belgium and Australia, it seems like nowhere is that safe.

The oil instability is likely to continue also as the new king has announced that production changes won't happen. That means any country that trades oil is likely to see its native currency's exchange rate decrease.