This week the spotlight is on legal and regulatory developments in Saudi Arabia, where according to local media reports, regulations to monitor the use of leisure drones in the Kingdom are being finalised by the Interior Ministry. It comes after a leisure drone caused a security alert around the Royal palaces in the country’s capital, Riyadh. Until they are finalised, leisure drone users will have to get permission from the police before they can fly them.

Elsewhere, the Kingdom’s Municipality and Rural Affairs Ministry has issued the municipal and technical requirements for movies in cinemas as part of the Implementing Regulations for licensing cinemas including independent screening houses and cinemas annexed to shopping malls in the Kingdom. Amongst other things, the requirements state the location needs to be in the urban boundaries of a city, it should be allocated for commercial use and should be on two streets one of which should be a commercial street. They should be at least 100 metres away from petrol stations and gas selling points. They should also be 100 metres away from malls, factories, schools and wedding halls. The entry and exit points should be off the commercial street, car parking should be made available to customers with a ratio of one parking lot for every three seats and entrance and exits of cinemas annexed to shopping malls should be the same as the shopping malls.