On November 17th, 2016, it was announced that Pokémon GO was available in eight new countries in the Middle East: Bahrain, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

On November 21st, 2016, Niantic announced that a special celebration for Pokémon GO that will double the amount of XP and Stardust from November 23rd, 2016 at 00:00 UTC to November 30th, 2016 00:00 UTC when players complete in-game actions.

A Celebration to Say Thank You

Trainers, It has been an incredible experience since we launched Pokémon GO a few short months ago in July. We are passionate about creating experiences that encourage exploration and promote exercise. We are humbled that hundreds of millions of you around the world have joined us on this journey. So we would like to say thank you - and what better way to say thank you than to celebrate our community.

So, starting November 23rd at 00:00 UTC and going through November 30th 00:00 UTC, we will double the amount of XP and Stardust you receive when completing in-game actions.

Source: http://pokemongo.nianticlabs.com/en/post/celebration-nov2016/

Pokémon GO updated to version 0.47.1 for Android and 1.17.0 for iOS

Trainers, Pokémon GO is in the process of being updated to version 0.47.1 for Android and 1.17.0 for iOS devices. Below are some release notes and comments from our development team.

• Fixed an issue where the Egg-hatching cutscene animation would sometimes be briefly visible from the map view.
• Minor text fixes

Source: http://pokemongo.nianticlabs.com/en/post/ver-update-111816/