A U.S. official has confirmed that an American citizen of Somali origin who claims he was beaten by security agents in Kuwait while they were interrogating him about his travels in Yemen and Somalia is being held in detention in the American-backed Arabian Peninsula country.

State Department spokesman Phillip J. Crowley offered few details about the case other than to say that the man, 18-year-old Gulet Mohamed from Virigina, was receiving U.S. consular assistance. Crowley denied that Mohamed was arrested by Kuwaiti authorities on behalf of the U.S.

"I’m not at liberty to say a great deal," he told reporters Friday. "We are aware of his detention, we have provided him consular services ... he was not detained at the behest of the United States government."

According to a report, Mohamed -- who said he was studying Arabic in Kuwait -- was taken into custody around Dec. 20 when he went to the airport there to have his Kuwaiti visa renewed. Mohamed had done the procedure every three months since he arrived in Kuwait in fall 2009, but this time he didn't get his visa stamped. Instead, he said he was hauled into a room and interrogated for hours by unknown officials before being blindfolded, handcuffed and driven to another location.

Arabian peninsula states have adopted a conciliatory tone on Iran a little over a week after U.S. diplomatic cables released by the watchdog site WikiLeaks appeared to show serious anxiety among Arab leaders over Tehran's growing power, and even enthusiasm in some corners (and at certain points) for a military attack on its controversial nuclear program.

Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Atiyyah stopped short of an outright repudiation, but he described the content of the leaked cables as "guesses or analyses that can hit or miss" and that "generated misunderstandings," according to the Abu Dhabi-based National newspaper.

The council wrapped up a two-day summit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Tuesday, gently calling on Iran to cooperate with the international community over its nuclear program in order to end sanctions against Tehran. The closing statement also reiterated Arab support for Iran's right to a peaceful nuclear program.

In the Persian Gulf, at least, capitalism does not equal freedom. 

In Kuwait, the government has announced plans to privatize phone and mail services while at the same time increasing censorship. It has begun shutting down all pornographic websites, and on Saturday, three ministries issued a joint ban on photography cameras with large lenses in public places, according to a Kuwaiti media report.

Kuwait's communications minister, Al Busairdi, announced plans to privatize landlines and postal services within the next two years, the UAE-based daily Gulf News reported.

A wider crackdown on illicit Web content seems to be part of the package as well. It will partly be conducted with the help of the provider of Blackberry services, Research in Motion, Al Busairdi said.

"The three telecom operators in Kuwait have also decided to install filters to block pornographic sites," he was quoted as saying by Gulf News. "Kuwait has also reached an agreement with Research in Motion (RIM) to provide information about any phone number, in accordance with the law."

Animal rights activists are speaking out against the treatment of millions of animals that will be killed and eaten during the Eid al Adha holiday, as suppliers and butchers are accused of ignoring religious edicts on humane slaughter.

On Friday, an Australian animal rights group reiterated its call for the Australian government to stop the sale of livestock to the Middle East after activists documented sheep in Kuwait and Bahrain allegedly being subjected to brutal treatment.

Australia is one of the largest exporters of livestock to the region, with trade totaling $297 million in 2009, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The group has already succeeded in banning livestock export to Egypt.

"In the same way that Christmas has become the peak time of animal suffering in the West with vast numbers of factory farmed animals slaughtered for Christmas celebrations, the Festival of Sacrifice is the worst time of animal suffering throughout the Middle East," the Animals Australia campaign homepage read.

A recent report in the Egyptian newspaper the Daily News featured butchers who admitted to ignoring Islamic hilal methods of slaughter in order to meet the high demand for meat. 

"Islam has put regulations for the slaughtering process ensuring that the animal is well treated before, during and after slaughtering and those who defy these rules are punished," Sheik Saber Taalab, former member of the Islamic Research Center in Cairo, told the paper.

The studios of the privately owned media outlet Scope TV in Kuwait lay in shambles Tuesday after a mob of 150 people armed with knives and pistols stormed its offices over the weekend, smashing windows and hitting the staff shortly after the channel broadcast a show that criticized Kuwait's ruling family, Arab media reports say.

Several members of the ruling family are suspected of having taken part in Sunday's attack on the TV station, which reportedly resulted in more than $1 million worth of damage to its offices and spurred it to halt broadcasts.

"They forced us off the air and started smashing computers, sets, studio equipment and cameras," Scope TV cameraman Fahad Rashed told the Associated Press.

Kuwait’s education chief has run up against the fire and brimstone of puritanical Muslim members of parliament for her recent decision to tone down the incendiary religious content of the nation's school curriculum.

In late June, reports surfaced that Minister of Education Moudhi Humoud met with some of the country’s teachers of Islamic studies to discuss a controversial draft of a ninth-grade final exam. 

In it, two potentially explosive questions were posed regarding the companions of the prophet Muhammad and appropriate behavior at a cemetery. Some accuse Humoud of instructing teachers to cancel both questions on their exams and to consider revising the state curriculum to skip over the issues completely.

Both topics are doctrinal points of contention between Sunni and Shiite religious scholars. The secular Sunni minister may have hoped to contain brimming sectarian tension in Kuwait, which is mostly Sunni but includes a significant Shiite minority. 

Immediately, a storm erupted in Kuwait City. Puritanical Sunni Salafists and other conservative Sunni parliamentarians called for Humoud’s grilling. Not at the stake, but in the halls of parliament.

The choice to clock late-night hours just like men is now a right for Kuwaiti women. 

In a revision to the labor law this week, the government of Kuwait allowed women to work night shifts at hotels, restaurants, pharmacies, press offices, banks and various other businesses.

The amendment overrides a labor law that barred Kuwaiti women from working between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. Minister of Social Affairs and Labor, Dr. Mohammed Afasi, says Kuwaiti women can work until midnight in such professions as law, medicine, journalism, tourism and hospitality.

However, they still will be barred from jobs described as physically dangerous or taxing, such as those in the manufacturing, construction and petrochemical fields.

Afasi has also decreed other caveats to the labor law, including a ban on any private sector employee, man or woman, from working between 12 and 4 p.m. from June until August due to the perils of the summer sun and heat. 

These revisions come with a recent tide of other gender-conscious legal reforms that put Kuwaiti women at the forefront of gender rights in the Persian Gulf, according to a March 2010 report by Freedom House. 

Generally, they enjoy more comprehensive social and economic rights than their counterparts.

A report by the Kuwaiti Al-Qabas newspaper last weekend claiming that the country's security services had dismantled a spy cell allegedly working for Iran's Revolutionary Guard has sparked a ruckus in the Kuwaiti parliament, raised diplomatic tensions and triggered rampant speculation in the Persian Gulf media.

Now, in an attempt to calm the situation, Kuwait has banned any more media reporting on the alleged spy cell.

On Thursday, the Kuwaiti English-language newspaper Kuwait Times reported that Public Attorney Hamed Al-Othman had issued a decision forbidding any more publication of news on the issue.

Seventeen Egyptians, working and living in Kuwait, were deported Saturday for violating the emirate's labor and immigration law, a Kuwaiti security official said.

The decision came one day after as many as 25 Egyptians -- including the deported -- were arrested in a Kuwait suburb following their organizing of a gathering to support potential Egyptian presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei and his National Front for Change.

Speaking to media on condition of anonymity, Kuwaiti sources added that the activists violated labor and immigration laws by gathering without official permission. While Kuwaiti officials have yet to comment on either the arrests or the deportations, Egyptian Foreign Ministry officials said they have heard about the news only from the Egyptian media.

The Egyptian ambassador to Kuwait, Tarek Farahat, said that "despite not being informed of any deportation decisions, Kuwaiti authorities have full sovereignty to extradite anyone living on its soil."

The deportations were criticized by local and international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, which issued a statement saying Kuwait was enabling Egypt's repression by harassing ElBaradei's supporters.

"Kuwait's state security should stop arresting and deporting expatriate supporters of ElBaradei," read the statement. "Kuwait should immediately release all remaining Egyptian detainees and allow those deported to return to their homes in Kuwait."

Hassan Nafaa, the National Front for Change's general coordinator, expressed his bemusement at the Egyptian authorities' silence on the matter so far. The Egyptian daily Al Masry Al Youm reported on Sunday that Kuwaiti parliament insiders believe the Egyptian embassy in Kuwait is behind the deportations after it led local authorities to the activists' movements.

Following his return to Egypt on Feb. 18 after stepping down from his post as head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency, ElBaradei formed the National Front for Change to pressure President Hosni Mubarak's regime for democratic reform. ElBaradei hopes that amending the constitution can help him and other independent candidates to run in the 2011 presidential elections.

-- Amro Hassan in Cairo

Photo: ElBaradei among some of his supporters. Credit: Victoria Hazou / AFP

The 28-year old Iranian-Kuwaiti composer and singer Emma Shah has written and performed in many languages, including Arabic, Russian, French and Japanese.

But her latest choice of language did not go over so well in Kuwait. After singing in Hebrew at a recent gathering in Kuwait City's Alumni Club, she's now being accused of promoting Zionism and normalization of ties with Israel, reports the UAE-based English newspaper Gulf News.

Her performance upset Kuwaiti religious figures, including the religious scholar Sheikh Mohammad Awadhi. In an article published in the Kuwaiti daily Al Rai newspaper, he condemned the singer for  "alien attitudes that clash with the spirit, culture and values of the Kuwaiti society."

Kuwaiti police were scouring a waste dump in search of the body of a Pakistani teenage girl believed killed and tossed there by an Egyptian "sex manic," according to the English-language Kuwaiti news website Arab Times, citing local newspapers.

According to the news report, the Ministry of the Interior has ordered a team of investigators to comb the Sabhan waste grounds in hopes of finding the remains of the young woman.

Police described the unnamed suspect, who was in custody, as a "quite eccentric" man who allegedly targeted young men and women, whom he "sometimes molested," according to the news report. Authorities said they found underwear, both men's and women's, at his apartment that they said had been stolen.

"He is also said to have hidden in obscured places and derived 'self-pleasure,' while he now and then visited rooftops of abandoned schools, snooping at apartments," the report said. "The suspect confessed to practicing ‘self-pleasure’ since he was 14 years old."

But another newspaper said the suspect was preparing to get married in a few weeks.

The victim was married to a man who also had disappeared, the report said.

-- Los Angeles Times

The subject of women's rights in the Middle East is contentious. Sensational media coverage of honor killings and child brides equates religious conservatism with gender inequality, incensing Western feminists on the one hand and provoking regional backlashes on the other.

The reality is far more nuanced, according to the the 2009 Global Gender Gap Report released in late October by the World Economic Forum, which ranks countries based on women's economic participation, educational attainment, health and political empowerment.

In Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar -- socially conservative Persian Gulf countries that all rely on some form of Sharia Islamic law -- more women than men enroll in higher education, although they have yet to be fully incorporated into the workforce. 

Syria, on the other hand, which is ruled by a nominally secular regime, has slid in the rankings for the last three years. 

Iran scores low in the fields of economic, educational and health equality, but performs relatively well on political empowerment. 

Saudi Arabia and Egypt still hover near the bottom of the list, but have improved steadily since 2006. 

Yemen remained the lowest-ranked country in the world for the fourth year in a row.