Dubai Newspaper

There are various newspapers every morning in our reception area. Since the ride to the company takes about half an hour I decided to check one of them out today. It helps to read something especially after 3 days of listening to German conversations it still sounds like 'vinshinghinsin'. The newspaper is called 7days.
Read the following articles, they're very weird & interesting.

‘Look into my eyes’

Wednesday, 07 December 2005

Two men are claiming they were hypnotised by a man who forced them to hand over their valuables. Khader Yousuf said he was about to leave his office when an elderly man walked in.
“Just when we were about to close for the weekend, he walked into the office and sat on the chair placed near the entrance. The very first thing I noticed was that his bearded face had a sort of radiance,” said Yousef.
“He started telling me about my wife and that I would soon be a dad. He also said the baby would be a boy,” said Yousuf, whose pregnant wife had just left for her hometown in India.
The man then asked Yousuf to pick up a stone from outside. “Since I had taken a big stone, he asked me to get a smaller one. Placing it just below the fingers, he asked me to close my palm,” said Yousuf.
When Yousef opened his hand he said he was stunned to see the stone had turned into a red gem. “For sometime I could not speak to him. I just listened. That was when he asked me for some money.

I opened my wallet and found a dhs100 note. He took the money from my wallet, turned it around his face and blew into the note,” said Yousuf. He claimed the man then asked to borrow his mobile phone.
“I gave him the phone and was looking through some papers. When I looked up after two minutes, the man had disappeared,” he said. Another man, Santosh, said he was approached in the same way.
He was asked to roll up a small piece of paper and hold it near his chest. “After two minutes, when I opened my hand the paper had transformed into a small gem stone. I was stunned when I saw it,” said Santosh, who, like Yousuf, says he was asked to make a cup of tea for the conman.

“I had almost entered into a state of trance. My surroundings had disappeared. I was ready to do anything he wanted me to,” said Santosh who gave away his wallet, gold bracelet and the mobile phone.
“I was not aware of what was happening around me for over ten minutes after he had left. When I came back to my senses, I realised that he had managed to remove my sim card and hand it back to me. I even gave him my wallet.”

An Eye For An Eye

Wednesday, 07 December 2005

A criminal who blinded a young Saudi national in a fight faces
having his own eye surgically removed as a punishment. Naushad, 34, who
went to work in Saudi
Arabia eight years ago is currently in prison
awaiting the outcome of an appeal against the rare procedure.Under the
traditional Hamurabi code, a crime victim can either forgive the criminal for
the act, or demand retribution – in this case the removal of the offender’s eye,
which a lower court has already decreed.The victim’s family has refused to back
down
or accept money and has asked, as is their right, for the operation to
go ahead. If the eye-plucking goes ahead, it will be only the second
time the punishment has been used in Saudi Arabia in almost 40 years.

Three years ago Naushad sold a battery charger worth dhs20 to a young
Saudi man in a petrol
station near Dammam. The man returned a few hours
later and demanded a refund. When Naushad refused, a fight broke out.The Saudi
man was hit in the head with the charger, blinding him in his left eye. A
superior court in Riyadh has already asked the lower court in Damman to
re-investigate because of the unusual nature of the punishment.Naushad’s family
have already petitioned Kerala’s Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. The
family also plan to appeal directly to Saudi’s King Abdullah for
mercy."The punishment will be implemented by doctors of a government
hospital in Dammam," a friend of the convicted man told 7DAYS from Saudi Arabia.

In August 2000, the daily Okaz
reported that a Saudi court had ordered the surgical removal of the left eye of
Abd al-Muti Abdel Rahman Muhamed, an Egyptian, after he was convicted of
throwing acid in the face of another Egyptian, injuring and disfiguring his left eye.