Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has inaugurated a high-speed rail link between the two holiest cities in Islam, part of efforts to boost tourism as the country seeks to shed dependence on oil exports.
The 280-mile (450km) Haramain railway connecting Mecca and Medina with the Red Sea city of Jeddah cost £6bn ($7.87bn) and is one of the largest transport projects in the Middle East, targeting nearly 60 million passengers annually. Commercial operations are due to begin next week.
The Makkah-Madinah high-speed railway will shorten the travel time between Jeddah and Makkah to about 21 minutes, and to less than two and a half hours between Makkah and Madinah. The train is designed to travel at a speed of more than 300 kilometers an hour and is considered the fastest in the Middle East. The train is managed with a world-class operating system and will connect Jeddah to Makkah via a 78 km double-track lane. 60 million passengers per year will be able to travel by the train.
Pilgrims comprise the bulk of Saudi Arabia’s 20 million annual foreign visitors, apart from workers and business travellers. More than 2 million came for this year’s hajj and 6.5 million performed umrah in 2017.
Officials aim to increase the number of umrah and hajj pilgrims to 15 million and five million respectively by 2020, and hope to double the umrah number again to 30 million by 2030.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ended a visit to Germany by opening one of Europe’s largest mosques. He said the mosque in Cologne stood as a symbol of peace and thanked the German government for pressing ahead with its construction despite protests. “We need to put aside our differences and focus on our common interests,” he said.
Germany is home to a 3 million-strong Turkish diaspora. Cologne’s Central Mosque was built by an Islamic religious group with close ties to the Turkish state.
With space for 1,100 people, the central mosque in Cologne is the largest mosque in Europe — outside of Turkey. The mosque was first used for Friday prayers a year ago, but it hasn’t officially opened.
Construction on the building began in 2009, but took several years longer than scheduled to complete. It’s situated in the heart of Cologne’s Ehrenfeld neighborhood, which is home to the city’s Turkish community.

Tehran: Turkey, Russia, and Iran have agreed to use their local currencies for trade between the three countries, according to Central Bank of Iran Governor Abdolnaser Hemati.
He termed the meetings in Tehran that saw the participation of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the trilateral summit on Syria as fruitful. He said they had agreed on the trade of petroleum, gas, and fundamental products, and also agreed on some banking issues.
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Scholars around the globe will soon be able to read 11th to 19th century archival items from the Muslim world that are now only accessible in the climate-controlled stacks of Columbia’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
The project will shed light on both the rich cultural heritage of the Muslim world and the collaboration between Islamic civilizations and the West. Religion, medicine, history, literature, astronomy and mathematics are among the subjects in the collection.
“This is important for any number of reasons,” said Sean Quimby, director of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library. “First and foremost, it will provide global access to unique research materials that have been hidden from view for too long.” Columbia Libraries’ preservation and digital conversion division will digitize 345 items, which is about one-quarter of the total covered by the grant.
The manuscripts originated in countries from southern Spain to India and are in a mix of languages, including Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish and have been used by professors of Middle Eastern Studies and history for teaching and research.
The manuscripts—both those recently digitized and those awaiting digitization—may hold new discoveries about the Islamic history of science,

New Delhi: Son of an electrician, Mohammed Aamir Ali, a diploma student from Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) Delhi, has walked out with an annual package of $100,008 (approximately Rs. 70 lakh) from Frission Motor Werks, an American firm. The firm has assigned him the post of battery management system engineer at Charlotte in North Carolina. JMI said this is the highest salary package for any Diploma in Engineering student at the college since its inception.
Mohammed could not get admission for an engineering course despite performing well in the JMI school board examination. After failing in his first attempt to get into the engineering course, he opted for a diploma in Mechanical Engineering at JMI in 2015.
Despite his failures, his passion for science and technology led him to work on electric vehicles. Mohammed says that if his project succeeds, then the cost of charging an electric vehicle in India will become nearly zero.

The Muslim World League (MWL) launched advanced halal identification system, which will help to guarantee that all meat products exported to Saudi Arabia, and a number of other countries, comply with Shariah standards.
The global system, which represents the highest halal standards, will be overseen by the League, which is the only organization in Saudi Arabia and several other Islamic countries, authorized to issue halal certificates.