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.

Saudia Flight 163

Saudia Flight 163 was a scheduled passenger flight of Saudia that caught fire after takeoff from Riyadh International Airport (now the Riyadh Air Base) on a flight to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, 19 August 1980. All 287 passengers and 14 crew on board the Lockheed L-1011-200 TriStar, registration HZ-AHK, died after the aircraft made an emergency landing back at the Riyadh airport.

At the time, the accident was the second deadliest single aircraft disaster in history, after Turkish Airlines Flight 981. It's the sixth deadliest aircraft disaster overall, after the Tenerife airport disaster, Japan Airlines Flight 123, the Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision, Turkish Airlines Flight 981, and Air India Flight 182. It was also the highest death toll of any aviation accident in Saudi Arabia and the highest death toll of any accident involving a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar anywhere in the world. It is also the deadliest aviation disaster that did not involve a crash on impact or mid-flight break up.

Saudi 2

Saudi TV Channel 2 (KSA 2), or as of 2014 known as Saudi 2 is the English news and entertainment TV channel of Saudi Arabia.

Established in 1964, the channel produces programmes focusing on cultural, political, and economic issues aimed at expatriates living in Saudi Arabia. Following its conversion to a 24-hour channel it expanded its broadcasting to Europe and North America in the middle of 2007 and now employs a large network of news correspondents based in the Middle East, the United Kingdom and the United States.

References

External links

Creative

Creative may refer to:

Companies

Entertainment

Other uses

See also

Creative Technology Limited

Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singapore-based global company headquartered in Jurong East, Singapore. The principal activities of the company and its subsidiaries consist of the design, manufacture and distribution of digitized sound and video boards, computers and related multimedia, and personal digital entertainment products.

It also partners with mainboard manufacturers and laptop brands to embed its Sound Blaster technology on their products.

History

The firm began as a computer repair shop, where Sim Wong Hoo developed an add-on memory board for the Apple II computer. Later, they started creating customized PCs adapted in Chinese. A part of this design included enhanced audio capabilities, so that the device could produce speech and melodies. The success of this audio interface led to the development of a standalone sound card.

In 1987, they released a 12-voice sound generator sound card for the IBM PC architecture, the Creative Music System (C/MS), featuring two Philips SAA1099 chips. Sim personally went from Singapore to Silicon Valley and managed to get RadioShack's Tandy division to market the product. The card was, however, unsuccessful and lost to AdLib. Learning from this, Creative produced the first Sound Blaster, which included the prior CM/S hardware but also incorporated the Yamaha YM3812 chip (also known as OPL2) that was found on the AdLib card, as well as adding a component for playing and recording digital samples. The firm used aggressive marketing strategies, from calling the card a "stereo" component (only the C/MS chips were capable of stereo, not the complete product) to calling the sound producing micro-controller a "DSP" (for "digital sound processor"), hoping to associate the product with a digital signal processor (the DSP could encode/decode ADPCM realtime, but otherwise had no other DSP-like qualities).

Creative (song)

"Creative" was released in November 2008 as the third single from Leon Jackson's debut album Right Now. To promote the track Jackson appeared on the official BBC Children in Need 2008 show performing the song as an "exclusive" as this was the first time Jackson had performed the track. The song went onto debut at number 94 on the UK Singles Charts.

Release and promotion

The song was released in November 2008 as a digital download only through Syco and Sony BMG. To promote the song, Jackson appeared on the 2008 series of Children in Need where he performed the song in London.

Music video

The music video for "Creative" shows Jackson performing the song in front of a big band. Also, in the video Jackson is trying to impress a female which features in the video. Throughout the video the female does not pay much attention to Jackson but however towards the end of the video the female seems to pay slight attention to Jackson.

Critical reception

The BBC said: