Yemen

Coordinates: 15°N 48°E / 15°N 48°E / 15; 48

Yemen (ⁱ/ˈjɛmən/; Arabic: اليَمَن‎ al-Yaman), officially known as the Republic of Yemen (الجمهورية اليمنية al-Jumhūrīyah al-Yamanīyah), is an Arab country in Western Asia, occupying the southwestern to the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. Yemen is the second largest country in the peninsula, occupying 527,970 km² (203,850 sq mi). The coastline stretches for about 2,000 km (1,200 mi). It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, the Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea to the south, and Oman to the east. Although Yemen's constitutionally stated capital is the city of Sana'a, the city has been under rebel control since February 2015. Because of this, Yemen's capital has been temporarily relocated to the port city of Aden, on the southern coast. Yemen's territory includes more than 200 islands; the largest of these is Socotra.

Yemen was the home of the Sabaeans (biblical Sheba), a trading state that flourished for over a thousand years and probably also included parts of modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea. In 275 AD, the region came under the rule of the later Jewish influenced Himyarite Kingdom. Christianity arrived in the 4th century AD whereas Judaism and local paganism were already established. Islam spread quickly in the 7th century and Yemenite troops were crucial in the expansion of the early Islamic conquests. Administration of Yemen has long been notoriously difficult. Several dynasties emerged from the 9th to 16th century, the Rasulid being the strongest and most prosperous. The country was divided between the Ottoman and British empires in the early 20th century. The Zaydi Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen was established after World War I in North Yemen before the creation of Yemen Arab Republic in 1962. South Yemen remained a British protectorate until 1967. The two Yemeni states united to form the modern republic of Yemen in 1990.

Hidden camera

A hidden camera or spy camera is a still or video camera used to record people without their knowledge. The camera is "hidden" because it is either not visible to the subject being filmed, or is disguised as another object. Hidden cameras can be built into commonly used objects such as television sets, smoke detectors, clock radios, motion detectors, ball caps, plants, and mobile phones. Hidden cameras may be used for household surveillance and may also be used commercially or industrially as security cameras. The proliferation and lower costs of video recording devices has led to an increase in the use of hidden cameras for legitimate surveillance need, as well as for entertainment and other purposes.

The use of hidden cameras raises personal privacy issues and there may be legal aspects to consider, depending on the jurisdiction in which use takes place. A hidden camera can be contrasted with CCTV, which is visible and which sometimes is accompanied with a warning notice of its presence.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia (ⁱ/ˌsɔːdiː əˈreɪbiə/, ⁱ/ˌsaʊ-/), officially known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is an Arab state in Western Asia constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula. With a land area of approximately 2,150,000 km² (830,000 sq mi), Saudi Arabia is geographically the second-largest state in the Arab world after Algeria. Saudi Arabia is bordered by Jordan and Iraq to the north, Kuwait to the northeast, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates to the east, Oman to the southeast, and Yemen to the south. It is the only nation with both a Red Sea coast and a Persian Gulf coast, and most of its terrain consists of arid inhospitable desert or barren landforms.

The area of modern-day Saudi Arabia formerly consisted of four distinct regions: Hejaz, Najd, and parts of Eastern Arabia (Al-Ahsa) and Southern Arabia ('Asir). The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932 by Ibn Saud. He united the four regions into a single state through a series of conquests beginning in 1902 with the capture of Riyadh, the ancestral home of his family, the House of Saud. The country has since been an absolute monarchy, effectively a hereditary dictatorship governed along Islamic lines. The ultra-conservative Wahhabism religious movement within Sunni Islam has been called "the predominant feature of Saudi culture", with its global spreading largely financed by the oil and gas trade. Saudi Arabia is sometimes called "the Land of the Two Holy Mosques" in reference to Al-Masjid al-Haram (in Mecca), and Al-Masjid an-Nabawi (in Medina), the two holiest places in Islam. The Kingdom has a total population of 28.7 million, of which 20 million are Saudi nationals and 8 million are foreigners.

Battle of Taiz (2011)

The Battle of Taiz (2011) erupted during the 2011 Yemeni Revolution, between forces loyal to Yemeni leader Ali Abdullah Saleh and opposition protesters, backed by armed tribesmen and defecting soldiers in the city of Taiz.

The battle

Opposition demonstrators had occupied the main square in the city since the start of the uprising against the rule of president Saleh. The protests were for the most part peaceful. However, that changed on 29 May, when the military started an operation to crush the protests and clear the demonstrators from their camp at the square. Troops reportedly fired live ammunition and from water cannons on the protesters, burned their tents and bulldozers ran over some of them. The opposition described the event as a massacre.

Street clashes continued and by 31 May, the death toll among protesters reached between 28 and 64. On 31 May, about 100 women protesters had gathered in a central square, challenging security forces nearby to use force, which would represent a breach of social norms. But the women were soon dispersed by female police officers and women who support the president.