Soca Warriors Online Discussion Forum
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: E-man on January 22, 2015, 07:55:26 PM
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King Abdullah, Who Nudged Saudi Arabia
Forward, Dies at 90
By DOUGLAS MARTIN and BEN HUBBARD
NY Times
JAN. 22, 2015
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who came to the throne in old age and earned a
reputation as a cautious reformer even as the Arab Spring revolts toppled
heads of state and Islamic State militants threatened the Muslim
establishment that he represented, died on Friday, Saudi officials said. He was
90.
The cause was unknown. He had been in a hospital since December and
placed on a respirator.
Succession was swift. Abdullah’s brother and crown prince, Salman, in a
statement attributed to him on Saudi state television, announced the king’s
death and that he had assumed the throne.
The royal court, quoted by the official Saudi Press Agency, said the king
had a lung infection when he was admitted on Dec. 31 to the Riyadh hospital
named for his father, Abdul Aziz, who through conquest and multiple
marriages forged the desert kingdom in the years after the destruction of the
Ottoman Empire.
Accidents of birth and geology made Abdullah one of the world’s
wealthiest and most powerful men. In control of a fifth of the world’s known
petroleum reserves, he traveled to medical appointments abroad in a fleet of
jumbo jets, and the changes he wrought in Saudi society were fueled by
gushers of oil money.
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