new regulations of freemarket economics," he said.

Jeddah -The municipality here on Tuesday announced completion of a three-stage city cleaning operation. New cleaning contracts totaling approximately SR900 million were recently awarded to three contractors - Dallah, Sadaqah and Alwan cleaning company - to keep the Red Sea port city and Gateway to the Two Holy Mosques spic and span over the next five years.The contracts are for three zones - south, north and central Jeddah. Previously, only one cleaning company, Dallah, handled the operation. Ahmad Al-Ghamdi, the municipality's PR director said the three contractors efficiently met the deadlines set in timetable, and the specifications of their contracts.

"The municipality deployed some 2,073 cleaning workers and 64 trucks for the three-stage operation," Al-Ghamdi said.

The first phase, completed in December, included puttingvolcanic origin. But there are enough indications to doubt the necessity of a reaction even remotely like the irrational panic that is causing the closure of European air spaces.

For example, the famous BA9 flight that almost crashed in 1982, was not the only flight to pass through that area. Wikipedia reports that the airspace around the Galunggung volcano was temporarily closed after the accident, reopened days later and permanently shut only after a similar incident to a Singapore Airlines flight around 19 days later, on July 13, 1982.

Indeed, there are indications that the first “encounter” with the ashes from Galunggung had occurred on April 5. That is, in three months and with little precaution taken, only twice the conditions were bad enough for flights to experience severe problems.