Forty teenage girls from the Middle East are visiting P.E.I. as part of a special language and cultural exchange program. It's a partnership between UPEI, the International Language Institute, and the Abu Dhabi Education Council. The 16- and 17-year-old girls are from the United Arab Emirates, and are living in residence at UPEI. Serena Lambert, academic advisor for the International Language Institute, said the program is highly competitive.

As the Egyptian military continues its bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and other protesters, U.S. President Barack Obama is facing a dwindling range of options for dealing with the crisis. Obama has, so far, refused to cut off U.S. aid to Egypt's interim government. The president has made it clear that his administration is rethinking its dealings with Egypt's military.

With the bloodbath in Egypt, ongoing carnage in Syria, and gruesome bombings in Iraq, another explosion in the Middle East might hardly seem like news. But the importance of the blast that rocked Beirut’s southern Shia-dominated suburbs on August 15, killing around 20 people and wounding hundreds more, should not be diminished. It could spell the beginning of the end for Hezbollah, the dominant political-military actor in Lebanon and one of the United States’ most powerful nemeses in the region.

Saudi Arabia is ranked first in the growth of tourism in the Arab world followed by Egypt and Morocco, according to a recent report by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). Saudi Arabia’s top ranking was not hampered by a significant decline in the number of tourists in 2012. The report said the Kingdom witnessed the largest decline in the number of tourists — 22 percent — in 2012 compared to a whopping increase of 61 percent in 2011 over 2010. Tourists numbers are likely to drop again at the end of this year.

Over the last day and a half, international attention has fixated on the Egyptian military’s bloody crackdown on supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi. While the UN, EU, and Western and regional nations were quick to come forth with their own reactions to the events, Asia has remained relatively quiet. This was certainly true of China, which said little for the first 24 hours or so of the crackdown. On Thursday afternoon, however, the Foreign Ministry released a terse statement.

Vladimir Putin appears to be seizing on the Egyptian crisis and the U.S. response to it to expand Russia’s influence in the Arab world’s most populous country. On Thursday afternoon President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. would be cancelling a joint military exercise with the Egyptian Army over its violent crackdown on supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has distanced itself from a series of obscene Facebook posts written by a senior official who is currently in charge of efforts by Israel to improve its image. Daniel Seaman, who was recently promoted to the post of head of Israeli public diplomacy on the internet, is the architect of a controversial new programme to mobilise hundreds of university students to write pro-Israel Facebook posts by giving them scholarships, and formerly served as director of Israel’s Government Press Office.

President Obama, deploring the military-led Egyptian government’s deadly crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood protesters there, said on Thursday that the United States would pull out of scheduled joint military exercises with the Egyptian Army. “While we want to sustain our relationship with Egypt, our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual while civilians are being killed in the streets,” Mr. Obama said in remarks delivered from his rented vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard.