Syria rebels seize base as envoy holds talks

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) - Rebels seized control of one of Syria's largest helicopter bases on Friday, opposition sources said, in their first capture of a military airfield used by President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

Fighting raged across the country as international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi sought a political solution to Syria's civil war, meeting senior U.S. and Russian officials in Geneva.

But the two world powers are still deadlocked over Assad's fate in any transition.

The United States, which backs the 21-month-old revolt, says Assad can play no future role, while Syria's main arms supplier Russia said before the talks that his exit should not be a precondition for negotiations.

Syria is mired in bloodshed that has cost more than 60,000 lives and displaced millions of people. Severe winter weather is compounding their misery. The U.N. children's agency UNICEF says more than 2 million children are struggling to stay warm.

The capture of Taftanaz air base, after months of sporadic fighting, could help rebels solidify their hold on northern Syria, according to Rami Abdelrahman, head of the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

TACTICAL, NOT STRATEGIC GAIN

But Yezid Sayigh, at the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, said it was not a game-changer, noting that it had taken months for the rebels to overrun a base whose usefulness to the military was already compromised by the clashes around it.

"This is a tactical rather than a strategic gain," he said.

In Geneva, U.N.-Arab League envoy Brahimi's closed-door talks began with individual meetings with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov. He later held talks with both sides together.

A U.S. official said negotiations would focus on "creating the conditions to advance a political solution - specifically a transitional governing body".

Six months ago, world powers meeting in Geneva proposed a transitional government but left open Assad's role. Brahimi told Reuters on Wednesday that the Syrian leader could play no part in such a transition and suggested it was time he quit.

Responding a day later, Syria's foreign ministry berated the veteran Algerian diplomat as "flagrantly biased toward those who are conspiring against Syria and its people".

Russia has argued that outside powers should not decide who should take part in any transitional government.

"Only the Syrians themselves can agree on a model or the further development of their country," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.

REFUGEE MISERY

But Syrians seem too divided for any such agreement.

The umbrella opposition group abroad, the Syrian National Coalition, said on Friday it had proposed a transition plan that would kept government institutions intact at a meeting with diplomats in London this week. But the plan has received no public endorsement from the opposition's foreign backers.

With no end to fighting in sight, the misery of Syrian civilians has rapidly increased, especially with the advent of some of the worst winter conditions in years.

Saudi Arabia said it would send $10 million worth of aid to help Syrian refugees in Jordan, where torrential rain has flooded hundreds of tents in the Zaatari refugee camp.

A fierce storm that swept the region has raised concerns for 600,000 Syrian refugees who have fled to neighboring countries, as well as more than 2.5 million displaced inside Syria, many of whom live in flimsy tents at unofficial border camps.

Opposition activists report dozens of weather-related deaths in Syria in the last four days. UNICEF said refugee children are at risk because conditions have hampered access to services.

Earlier this week, another United Nations agency said around one million Syrians were going hungry. The World Food Programme cited difficulties entering conflict zones and said that the few government-approved aid agencies allowed to distribute aid were stretched to the limit.

The WFP said it supplying rations to about 1.5 million people in Syria each month, far short of the 2.5 million deemed to be in need.

(Additional reporting by Alexander Dzsiadosz in Beirut and Raissa Kasolowsky in Abu Dhabi; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

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"Tsunami" of property cooling measures, say analysts

SINGAPORE: Property analysts have described the latest set of government measures as the "tsunami" of property cooling measures, as it affects public and private housing, executive condominiums, and industrial properties.

Some say, the additional stamp duty will hit investors wanting to own a second or subsequent property.

Mr Mohamed Ismail, CEO of PropNex, said: "Such a drastic move will have a downward spiral effect, loss of confidence in the market... will the current property prices go under such that people who bought in recent times... will their property be a negative asset moving forward?

"More pertinent, as far as public housing here, is the restrictions on PR (Permanent Resident). I think there has been a lot of concerns and people have raised about PR being able to benefit while holding on to public housing and investing. These measures will increase the supply of public housing, and overall, this will help the public housing to be further moderated."

Meanwhile, some analysts say the new measures on industrial properties did not come as a surprise.

Mr Donald Han, Managing Director of HSR Property Consultants, said: "The measures are quite timely and could have come earlier because if you notice, industrial prices have actually increased by about average 25 per cent per annum since 2010, and if you look at last year, the full year price estimate capital values have increased by more than 30 per cent.

"So all in, all the government could have actually reacted earlier on, perhaps 12 months early rather than now. But it's never too late. I think that will have a huge impact on the pace of price movement, moving forward. I expect industrial price movement this year to be a bit more moderated to a single-digit increase, if any."

- CNA/de

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Hate speech: Akbaruddin Owaisi sent to 5-day police custody

NIRMAL/HYDERABAD: A court at Nirmal in Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh on Friday granted police a five-day custody of Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi, accused of sedition over his "hate speech".

In a related development, a court in Hyderabad directed police to investigate a speech made by Owaisi in Nanded in 2012, which allegedly targeted a particular community.

Upon a complaint filed by Hyderabad corporator Raja Singh, the court on Friday asked Mangalghat police here to probe the Nanded speech and file a report by February 11.

Magistrate's court in Nirmal today allowed police to take Akbaruddin in custody from tomorrow.

Akbaruddin, arrested by Nirmal police on January 8 from Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad in connection with a hate speech case, is at present in judicial custody in Adilabad district jail. The police had sought a seven-day custody.

Owaisi has been booked for alleged hate speeches by the police of Nirmal and Nizambad Two town, and Osmania University police here. Further, the metropolitan magistrate's court of L B Nagar on Thursday took cognisance of another complaint over one of his speeches, and summoned him to the court on February 4.

Osmania University police have issued notice to a local TV channel for airing the controversial speeches that Akbaruddin had made at Nizamabad and Nirmal. The channel has also been asked to hand over video footage of the speeches to the investigating officer.

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Flu season strikes early and, in some places, hard

NEW YORK (AP) — From the Rocky Mountains to New England, hospitals are swamped with people with flu symptoms. Some medical centers are turning away visitors or making them wear face masks, and one Pennsylvania hospital set up a tent outside its ER to deal with the feverish patients.

Flu season in the U.S. has struck early and, in many places, hard.

While flu normally doesn't blanket the country until late January or February, it is already widespread in more than 40 states, with about 30 of them reporting some major hot spots. On Thursday, health officials blamed the flu for the deaths of 20 children so far.

Whether this will be considered a bad season by the time it has run its course in the spring remains to be seen.

"Those of us with gray hair have seen worse," said Dr. William Schaffner, a flu expert at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

The evidence so far points to a moderate season, Schaffner and others say. It looks bad in part because last year was unusually mild and because the main strain of influenza circulating this year tends to make people sicker and really lay them low.

David Smythe of New York City saw it happen to his 50-year-old girlfriend, who has been knocked out for about two weeks. "She's been in bed. She can't even get up," he said.

Also, the flu's early arrival coincided with spikes in a variety of other viruses, including a childhood malady that mimics flu and a new norovirus that causes vomiting and diarrhea, or what is commonly known as "stomach flu." So what people are calling the flu may, in fact, be something else.

"There may be more of an overlap than we normally see," said Dr. Joseph Bresee, who tracks the flu for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most people don't undergo lab tests to confirm flu, and the symptoms are so similar that it can be hard to distinguish flu from other viruses, or even a cold. Over the holidays, 250 people were sickened at a Mormon missionary training center in Utah, but the culprit turned out to be a norovirus, not the flu.

Flu is a major contributor, though, to what's going on.

"I'd say 75 percent," said Dr. Dan Surdam, head of the emergency department at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center, Wyoming's largest hospital. The 17-bed emergency room saw its busiest day ever last week, with 166 visitors.

The early onslaught has resulted in a spike in hospitalizations. To deal with the influx and protect other patients from getting sick, hospitals are restricting visits from children, requiring family members to wear masks and banning anyone with flu symptoms from maternity wards.

One hospital in Allentown, Pa., set up a tent this week for a steady stream of patients with flu symptoms. But so far "what we're seeing is a typical flu season," said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital, Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest.

On Wednesday, Boston declared a public health emergency, with the city's hospitals counting about 1,500 emergency room visits since December by people with flu-like symptoms.

All the flu activity has led some to question whether this year's flu shot is working. While health officials are still analyzing the vaccine, early indications are that it's about 60 percent effective, which is in line with what's been seen in other years.

The vaccine is reformulated each year, based on experts' best guess of which strains of the virus will predominate. This year's vaccine is well-matched to what's going around. The government estimates that between a third and half of Americans have gotten the vaccine.

In New York City, 57-year-old Judith Quinones skipped getting a flu shot this season and suffered her worst case of flu-like illness in years. She was laid up for nearly a month with fever and body aches. "I just couldn't function," she said.

But her daughter got the vaccine. "And she got sick twice," Quinones said.

Europe is also suffering an early flu season, though a milder strain predominates there. Flu reports are up, too, in China, Japan, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Algeria and the Republic of Congo. Britain has seen a surge in cases of norovirus.

On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC. That's an estimate — the agency does not keep a running tally of adult flu deaths each year, only for children. Some state health departments do keep count, and they've reported dozens of flu deaths so far.

Flu usually peaks in midwinter. Symptoms can include fever, cough, runny nose, head and body aches and fatigue. Some people also suffer vomiting and diarrhea, and some develop pneumonia or other severe complications.

Most people with flu have a mild illness and can help themselves and protect others by staying home and resting. But people with severe symptoms should see a doctor. They may be given antiviral drugs or other medications to ease symptoms.

Flu vaccinations are recommended for everyone 6 months or older. Of the 20 children killed by the flu this season, only two were fully vaccinated.

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AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng in London contributed to this report.

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Online:

CDC flu: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/index.htm

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Teen to Hero Teacher: 'I Don't Want to Shoot You'

A California teacher'sbrave conversation with a 16-year-old gunman who had opened fire on his classroom bullies allowed 28 other students to quickly escape what could have been a massacre.

Science teacher Ryan Heber calmly confronted the teenager after he shot and critically wounded a classmate, whom authorities say had bullied the boy for more than year at Taft Union High School.

"I don't want to shoot you," the teen gunman told Heber, who convinced the teen gunman to drop his weapon, a high power shotgun.

Responding to calls of shots fired, campus supervisor Kim Lee Fields arrived at the classroom and helped Heber talk the boy into giving up the weapon.

"This teacher and this counselor stood there face-to-face not knowing if he was going to shoot them," said Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood. "They probably expected the worst and hoped for the best, but they gave the students a chance to escape."

One student, who police say the shooter had targeted, was shot. He was airlifted to a hospital and remains in critical, but stable condition, Youngblood said. He is expected to undergo surgery today.

Two other students received minor injuries. One suffered hearing loss and another fell over a table while evacuating. Heber received a wound to his head from a stray pellet, police said.

Taft Midway Driller/Doug Keeler/AP Photo

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Police said the teen, whose name has not been made public because he is a minor, began plotting on Wednesday night to kill two students he felt had bullied him.

Authorities believe the suspect found his older brother's gun and brought it into the just before 9 a.m. on Thursday and went to Heber's second-floor classroom where a first period science class with 20 students was taking place.

"He planned the event," Youngblood said. "Certainly he believed that the two people he targeted had bullied him, in his mind. Whether that occurred or not we don't know yet."

The gunman entered the classroom and shot one of his classmates. Heber immediately began trying to talk him into handing over the gun, and evacuating the other students through the classroom's backdoor.

"The heroics of these two people goes without saying. ... They could have just as easily ... tried to get out of the classroom and left students, and they didn't," the sheriff said. "They knew not to let him leave the classroom with that shotgun."

The gunman was found with several rounds of additional ammunition in his pockets.

Within one minute of the shooting, a 911 call was placed and police arrived on the scene. An announcement was made placing the school on lockdown and warning teachers and students that the precautions were "not a drill."

The school had recently announced new safety procedures following last month's deadly shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school in which 20 young children were killed. Six school staffers, including the principal, were killed as they tried to protect the children from gunman Adam Lanza.

The school employs an armed security guard, but he was not on campus Thursday morning.

Youngblood said the student would be charged with attempted murder, but the district attorney would decide if he was to be tried as an adult.

Some 900 students attend Taft Union High School, located in Taft, Calif., a rural community in southern California.

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NATO official says more missiles launched in Syria

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A short-range ballistic missile was fired inside Syria on Wednesday, following similar launches last week, a NATO official said on Thursday.

The official condemned as "reckless" the missile launches, which U.S. officials called an escalation of the 21-month-old Syrian civil war when their use was first spotted last month.

"The use of such indiscriminate weapons shows utter disregard for the lives of the Syrian people," he said.

The official said NATO had detected the launch of an unguided, short-range ballistic missile inside Syria on Wednesday, following similar launches on January 2 and 3. All the missiles were fired from inside Syria and landed in northern Syria, he said.

The description of the missiles fits the Scuds that are in the Syrian military's armory, but the official said NATO could not confirm the type of missile used.

The NATO official was responding to a report from a Syrian opposition activist living near the Qaldoun army base, 50 km (30 miles) north of Damascus, who said four large rockets, apparently Scuds, were fired from the base overnight.

NATO has agreed to send Patriot anti-missile batteries to protect its member Turkey from possible missile attack from Syria.

(Reporting by Adrian Croft; editing by Rex Merrifield and Sebastian Moffett)

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"Lincoln", "Life of Pi" lead Oscar nominations

 

LOS ANGELES: Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" earned the most Oscar nominations with 12, ahead of Lee Ang's "Life of Pi," with 11 nods, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Thursday.

Both movies are nominated for the coveted best film prize, along with "Silver Linings Playbook" and "Les Miserables," which each earned eight nominations, and Ben Affleck's political thriller "Argo" with seven.

Beyond best film, "Lincoln" earned nods for best director for Spielberg, best actor for Daniel Day-Lewis for his portrayal of the American president and best supporting actor for Tommy Lee Jones as abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens.

The other movies nominated for best film are "Beasts of the Southern Wild," "Zero Dark Thirty," "Amour" and "Django Unchained."

Other nominees for best actor besides Day-Lewis are Hugh Jackman in "Les Miserables," Bradley Cooper in "Silver Linings Playbook," Joaquin Phoenix in "The Master" and Denzel Washington for "Flight."

Best actress nominees are Jessica Chastain in "Zero Dark Thirty," Jennifer Lawrence for "Silver Linings Playbook," 85-year-old French actress Emmanuelle Riva in "Amour," Naomi Watts in "The Impossible" and nine-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis for "Beasts of the Southern Wild."

Best picture:
"Amour," "Argo," "Beasts of the Southern Wild," "Django Unchained," "Les Miserables," "Life of Pi," "Lincoln," "Silver Linings Playbook," "Zero Dark Thirty."

Best director:
Michael Haneke for "Amour," Benh Zeitlin for "Beasts of the Southern Wild," Lee Ang for "Life of Pi," Steven Spielberg for "Lincoln," and David O. Russell for "Silver Linings Playbook."

Best leading actor:
Bradley Cooper for "Silver Linings Playbook," Daniel Day-Lewis for "Lincoln," Hugh Jackman for "Les Miserables," Joaquin Phoenix for "The Master," and Denzel Washington for "Flight."

Best leading actress:
Jessica Chastain for "Zero Dark Thirty," Jennifer Lawrence for "Silver Linings Playbook," Emmanuelle Riva for "Amour," Quvenzhane Wallis for "Beasts of the Southern Wild," and Naomi Watts for "The Impossible."

Best supporting actor:
Alan Arkin for "Argo," Robert De Niro for "Silver Linings Playbook," Philip Seymour Hoffman for "The Master," Tommy Lee Jones for "Lincoln," and Christoph Waltz for "Django Unchained."

Best supporting actress:
Amy Adams for "The Master," Sally Field for "Lincoln," Anne Hathaway for "Les Miserables," Helen Hunt for "The Sessions," and Jacki Weaver for "Silver Linings Playbook."

Best foreign language film:
"Amour" (Austria), "Kon-Tiki" (Norway), "No" (Chile), "A Royal Affair" (Denmark) and "War Witch" (Canada).

Best animated feature:
"Brave," "Frankenweenie," "ParaNorman," "The Pirates! Band of Misfits" and "Wreck-It Ralph."

- AFP/fa

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Teach Pakistan a lesson like 1965: Hazare

RALEGAN-SIDDHI (Maharashtra): Social activist Anna Hazare Thursday demanded that India should "teach Pakistan a lesson" like it did in 1965 for the brutal killing of two Indian soldiers by Pakistani troops in Jammu and Kashmir.

"What they have done is simply unacceptable. How can they mutilate and take away the head of our soldier? This cannot be tolerated by any person," Hazare told reporters here.

"Pakistan seems to have forgotten the beating it took in the 1965 war with India. Don't they remember how they begged for mercy when Lahore was bombed during that war? But on and off, it keeps raising its head against India. We want a repeat of 1965. Pakistan should be taught a lesson again," Hazare said.

The 75-year-old also expressed his willingness to go to the border and fight enemy soldiers.

Hazare served in the Indian Army for 12 years before he was honourably discharged from service in 1975.

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Retooling Pap test to spot more kinds of cancer

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, doctors have lamented that there's no Pap test for deadly ovarian cancer. Wednesday, scientists reported encouraging signs that one day, there might be.

Researchers are trying to retool the Pap, a test for cervical cancer that millions of women get, so that it could spot early signs of other gynecologic cancers, too.

How? It turns out that cells can flake off of tumors in the ovaries or the lining of the uterus, and float down to rest in the cervix, where Pap tests are performed. These cells are too rare to recognize under the microscope. But researchers from Johns Hopkins University used some sophisticated DNA testing on the Pap samples to uncover the evidence — gene mutations that show cancer is present.

In a pilot study, they analyzed Pap smears from 46 women who already were diagnosed with either ovarian or endometrial cancer. The new technique found all the endometrial cancers and 41 percent of the ovarian tumors, the team reported Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

This is very early-stage research, and women shouldn't expect any change in their routine Paps. It will take years of additional testing to prove if the so-called PapGene technique really could work as a screening tool, used to spot cancer in women who thought they were healthy.

"Now the hard work begins," said Hopkins oncologist Dr. Luis Diaz, whose team is collecting hundreds of additional Pap samples for more study and is exploring ways to enhance the detection of ovarian cancer.

But if it ultimately pans out, "the neat part about this is, the patient won't feel anything different," and the Pap wouldn't be performed differently, Diaz added. The extra work would come in a lab.

The gene-based technique marks a new approach toward cancer screening, and specialists are watching closely.

"This is very encouraging, and it shows great potential," said American Cancer Society genetics expert Michael Melner.

"We are a long way from being able to see any impact on our patients," cautioned Dr. Shannon Westin of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She reviewed the research in an accompanying editorial, and said the ovarian cancer detection would need improvement if the test is to work.

But she noted that ovarian cancer has poor survival rates because it's rarely caught early. "If this screening test could identify ovarian cancer at an early stage, there would be a profound impact on patient outcomes and mortality," Westin said.

More than 22,000 U.S. women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year, and more than 15,000 die. Symptoms such as pain and bloating seldom are obvious until the cancer is more advanced, and numerous attempts at screening tests have failed.

Endometrial cancer affects about 47,000 women a year, and kills about 8,000. There is no screening test for it either, but most women are diagnosed early because of postmenopausal bleeding.

The Hopkins research piggybacks on one of the most successful cancer screening tools, the Pap, and a newer technology used along with it. With a standard Pap, a little brush scrapes off cells from the cervix, which are stored in a vial to examine for signs of cervical cancer. Today, many women's Paps undergo an additional DNA-based test to see if they harbor the HPV virus, which can spur cervical cancer.

So the Hopkins team, funded largely by cancer advocacy groups, decided to look for DNA evidence of other gynecologic tumors. It developed a method to rapidly screen the Pap samples for those mutations using standard genetics equipment that Diaz said wouldn't add much to the cost of a Pap-plus-HPV test. He said the technique could detect both early-stage and more advanced tumors. Importantly, tests of Paps from 14 healthy women turned up no false alarms.

The endometrial cancers may have been easier to find because cells from those tumors don't have as far to travel as ovarian cancer cells, Diaz said. Researchers will study whether inserting the Pap brush deeper, testing during different times of the menstrual cycle, or other factors might improve detection of ovarian cancer.

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Historic old Jeddah awaits life-saving restoration

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - In the heart of Saudi Arabia's sprawling Red Sea port city of Jeddah, centuries-old buildings tilt and buckle above the historic district's narrow alleys, withering away in the absence of decisive action to protect them.

The seventh-century historic district, with its mud and coral town houses adorned with ornate wooden balconies, holds the only remnants of the traditional architecture of the Hijaz, as the western Arabian Peninsula is known.

But while Jeddah is building the world's tallest tower as part of a modernization drive, efforts to preserve its oldest area are faltering.

"Every time I walk and see these houses it hurts," said Abir AbuSulayman, who lives in the modern part of Jeddah but lobbies for the restoration of the old city.

"I wasn't born here or ever lived in the area but I can feel how important it is and I feel proud that we have real history."

Restoration efforts have been left largely in private hands because Saudi authorities cannot by law intervene to renovate the privately owned homes in the district. Locals say the government has not shown enough interest in resolving the problem, or in breaking a logjam in financing the improvement of the area's public infrastructure.

As a result, a quarter of the houses in the district's square kilometer have collapsed, burnt down or been demolished in the past decade because home-owners cannot afford costly renovations and have little interest or incentive to do so.

Houses where the wealthiest Jeddah merchants once lived are now cheap dwellings for poor foreign laborers, beggars and illegal immigrants. Of the historic district's estimated 40,000 inhabitants, fewer than 5 percent are Saudis, the district's mayor Malak Baissa estimated.

Webs of intertwined cables cascade down the houses' dilapidated facades while satellite dishes hang from their cracked walls and rusty air conditioners protrude from their rotting wooden balconies.

A previous effort to list the historic area as a UNESCO world heritage site, which officials say would jumpstart restoration work, failed in part because there was no realistic master plan.

The government plans to resubmit its application to UNESCO this month, and this time has included proposals to encourage home-owners to restore their properties under expert guidance with loans and other financial incentives, as is the practice in some other countries with huge restoration projects.

"We are very optimistic that once it is registered everybody will come forward and be enthusiastic about (the restoration)," said Abdulgader Amir, the municipality's vice mayor for strategic planning.

CONSTANT MAINTENANCE

Jeddah's humid climate rots the houses' wood and erodes their walls, meaning they require constant maintenance. Local laws stipulate that this be done with mud and coral limestone drawn from the Red Sea, using costly traditional building techniques.

"The house will deteriorate if there is no one to take care of it. Like an old garment, if you don't patch it up it will disintegrate," said Younis al-Jazar, among the few Saudi citizens who still live in the area, where he was born and raised.

Costs of restoration vary depending on the size and extent of damage to a house, but can range from 50,000 riyals ($13,000) to over 3 million. Jazar said regular maintenance on his family home costs at least 6,000 riyals a year.

The local property market further discourages restoration efforts: new buildings in the area can command rents of 50,000 riyals a year compared with 2,400 for old houses.

"They (owners) know they are sitting on a very valuable land in the city center. They want to get rid of the old houses to build new structures," Amir said.

Of 600 old houses counted a decade ago only 450 remain.

Although the central government has instructed the city to spend $53 million to help restore the public parts of the district, the money must come from the city's own coffers, Amir said.

This is something that Jeddah, where creaking infrastructure contributed to deadly floods in 2010 and 2011, and which is completely overhauling its transport networks, cannot now afford.

"We can barely cover costs, so it's like giving something but it is not real... But we will keep asking for it," he said.

The government has bought and restored some properties in the area, including a 13th-century mosque and the house where Saudi founder Abdul Aziz al Saud lived when in Jeddah, but officials say it would be too expensive to purchase more buildings so they are now planning to provide state loans.

FRUSTRATION

Adhering to an austere version of Sunni Islam which prohibits the veneration of objects, Saudi Arabia has until recently neglected and even destroyed many of its historic sites such as homes and tombs of iconic Islamic figures in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

It has now listed two sites, the Nabatean rock-dwellings of Madain Saleh and the ruling al-Saud family's historical capital of Diriyah, with UNESCO and is working hard to protect its heritage there.

"Here in the kingdom there was a lack of awareness and appreciation for heritage and we have, in ignorance, destroyed many sites including Old Riyadh ... but thank goodness we have passed that stage," said Ali al-Ghabban, the Vice-President of Antiquities and Museums at the Supreme Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, a government department.

Some Jeddah citizens and other people from Hijaz, which includes Mecca, Medina and the old port town of Yanbu, accuse the government of playing regional favorites, stirring old resentments dating to the al-Saud's conquest of Hijaz in 1923.

They point to the investment of at least $133 million in preserving Diriyah and compare it unfavorably with the continuing neglect of cultural sites in their cities.

Amir defended the central government's priorities, however.

"Anything historical that has to do with the government and its establishment is naturally important ... that does not mean that Jeddah is neglected. But it was just a lot easier to deal with Diriyah considering no one lives there, it is much smaller than Jeddah and the government owns the whole area," he said.

As the authorities consider how to proceed with restoration of the historic district, Jeddah residents like AbuSulayman continue to lobby for swifter action and monitor the development in the area as best as they can.

"We don't have the power to make decisions but we are here," she said. "We need help ... (and) we are willing to do more."

(Editing by Angus McDowall and Sonya Hepinstall)

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