Some 1500 workers held a strike at the Media City, a center for television and movie production in a satellite city in the desert outside the capital.

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When they're not fighting city traffic in Cadillac suvs, middle-class Saudis frequent gleaming shopping malls lined with designer brand names from the U.S. In a country where women are required to wear full-length abayas in public, you can catch Sex and the City on satellite TV every Friday night.

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By 2030, when greater Cairo's population is predicted to top 30 million, the government estimates that half of those residents will live not in Cairo proper, but in a satellite city.

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