KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA

The leaders of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Kuwait) will meet in May to discuss creating a closer federal unit among the states.

"The ministers stated opposition to any foreign intervention in the domestic affairs of the GCC countries, highlighting the need for respecting the principles of neighborliness,"

Informed sources say that the initial plan was for officials to keep their doors open for the public throughout the week, but their need to follow-up on projects, chair meetings and oversee the flow of work in their administrations and ministries made the legislators consider this and restrict the ‘open’ days to three days a week.

GCC advisory summit next month will limit its discussion on the proposed confederation to a report by experts from the six member states

Saudi Arabia says recalls its ambassador from Egypt, closes embassy and consulates after protests

The Gulf Cooperation Council needs to be fully integrated to be able to confront increasingly ominous regional and global challenges, Saudi Arabia said on Saturday

The Gulf Cooperation Council needs to be fully integrated to be able to confront increasingly ominous regional and global challenges, Saudi Arabia said yesterday.

A member of the top clerical body in 2009 said girls should not play sports lest they lose their virginity by tearing their hymens.

Still, teaching extremism is only one facet of a much larger, more persistent problem...textbooks "have focused far too much on the lowest educational and skill objectives, such as rote memorization and classification, and neglected entirely the objectives of analysis, problem-solving, and critical thinking," leading to "passiveness and negativity."

The religious conservatives have declared war, not simply on freedom of expression but also on freedom of belief. The hard-liners believe that they will lose their hold on the Saudi street, were the youth to embrace ideas opposed to religion. In essence, they wish to institute Orwellian practices in Saudi Arabia, by criminalizing mere thought.

Turn from mere discussions into viable initiatives to improve workers’ conditions in both sending and recipient countries

"Saudi women getting more and more involved in wealth management. This is a big change compared to five to 10 years ago,"

Those found guilty will have to spend five days in prison if it is a first-time offender

Jeddah A court in Riyadh has sentenced prominent Saudi rights campaigner Mohammad Al Bajadi to four years in prison, activists said.

His beheading took to 20 the total number of executions in the conservative kingdom so far this year, according to an AFP tally based on official reports.

Three quarters of council members should be elected and the rest nominated by the minister of municipal and rural affairs.In an earlier announcement, King Abdullah allowed Saudi women to stand and vote in municipal elections and also become members of the Shoura Council.

As the population is left simmering after the 'Arab Spring,' those challenging the kingdom wonder whether it will suppress them or let the phenomenon grow."They can't buy their way out anymore and they're not willing to compromise," said Al-Qahtani, an economics professor and president of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Assn. "The problem is an aging leadership and a second generation that's really corrupt. The near future of this country is gloomy."

The forum, held in Jeddah for the 3rd consecutive year, is a platform to voice new eco-friendly strategies as main driving forces to encourage enterprise developmen

Single men in Riyadh will be able to visit shopping malls during peak hours

Protesting against detention of rights activist

Deal comes less than a month after Riyadh named an ambassador to Baghdad for the first time since Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990

Saudi government for confiscating the book Questions of the Revolution, written by Sheikh Salman Ben-Fahd al-Odah. On 14 March 2012, the authorities seized all copies available at the Riyadh Book Fair and ordered the administrator of the Book Fair to sign a pledge not to sell it.

A Saudi women's rights activist has told the BBC she is planning legal action against Kuwaiti Islamist MPs who demanded a ban on a youth conference that they condemned as un-Islamic

At least 588 people were executed across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) last year, the largest number anywhere in the world except in China and a 50% rise over 2010, Amnesty International said in a report on Tuesday

A travel ban on a prominent Saudi Arabian human rights defender imposed just before he planned to attend a democracy course in the United States must be lifted immediately, Amnesty International said today.

Suspect arrested in connection with shooting attack on police patrol in mainly Shiite-populated eastern province of Qatif.

Saudi authorities have banned prominent rights activist Waleed Abu Alkhair from travelling to the United States where he was to attend a forum organised by the US State Department

Samar Badawi was one of several women just honored at the International Women of Courage Awards. But her personal courage has been displayed in her native Saudi Arabia, potentially the most misogynist country in the world

The agreement stipulates that the accusing country will hand over the convicted person to the country where the verdict will be implemented at an agreed time and place

Students in the Women’s College of Art in Mahayil in Asir province and Buraidah in Qassim province are demanding changes in university regulations and a better infrastructure and academic environment.

Saudi Arabia is one of three countries that have never included women on their Olympic teams, along with Qatar and Brunei.

Saudi women are getting impatient

Thousands of students at an all-female university in Saudi Arabia boycotted classes on Saturday, protesting against poor services, witnesses said, in a rare display of dissent from women in the conservative Islamic kingdom

Oil consumption in Saudi Arabia is the highest in the world, despite the fact that the economy is not heavily industrialized. According to International Energy Agency (IEA), Saudi Arabia consumes about three million barrels a day or about one billion barrels each year.

Father versus daughter and Right to lead your own life

Syria during the al-Assad era – both al-Assad the father and al-Assad the son – has always served as a source of provocation to Saudi Arabia, either publicly or privatel

A decision to close 10 women’s health gyms in Madina has been greeted with fury by female customers.

Our demands and requirements are very normal and reasonable

People who encouraged a controversial Saudi columnist facing charges of blasphemy could be summoned by the public prosecutor, a report has said

What is behind all the commotion surrounding Saudi blogger Hamza Kashgari?

Saudi Arabia's mufti, the country's highest religious figure, has rejected calls to shift the trial of Hamza Kashgari, the controversial former columnist, from religious courts to the information ministry

Riyadh's Jordan ambassador to oversee Baghdad

The tweets sparked, within hours of their posting, a flood of condemnations from social network users who called for his arrest and trial

The ambassador said the Iraq delegation would comprise members of the human rights committee of Parliament, Foreign Ministry officials, and representatives of the Iraqi National Society for Human Rights.

Courts urged to take up lawsuits demanding the right to drive

Rare exhibition in kingdom affords them opportunity for social commentary through art as region's political landscape continues to change

Despite progressing and being open-minded, women are succumb to some sort violence and abuse at home or at work

The most influential religious scholars in Saudi Arabia would object even to such an attempt to codify Islamic legal principles. It is not so much writing them down that would bother them; it is obliging the individual judge to follow those texts. The binding nature of codes, not their written nature, provokes the strongest objections.

A SOCIAL revolution began in Saudi Arabia this month, and it has little if anything to do with the Arab Spring. Women are going to work in lingerie shops.

Women in the kingdom who have the means hire drivers while others must depend on the goodwill of male relatives.

The Ministry of Labor has started cracking down on people employing housemaids who have run away from their original sponsors

A group of Saudi human rights activists filed a complaint to the Minister of Social Affairs after its rejection to grant them a permit to establish a center for defending human rights in the country.

Gulf citizens have become sick and tired of this broken record, and want to hear decisions rising up to the level of the GCC states’ history,, geography and the relations of their people, in order to uphold the acquisitions and political, economic and strategic status of these countries whose lands are filled with oil and gas.

Seen as a hardliner, Crown Prince may reveal inclusive side as heir to Saudi King

Granting of the vote to Saudi women is a potentially brilliant development is because it implicitly recognises that these women are political beings.

Strengthening relations with citizens and to facilitate their communication with the commission.

In a historic announcement Sunday, King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, said that he was giving Saudi women the right to vote and run in municipal elections as well as the right to join the Shoura Council as members.

The prime suspect among the 16 defendants facing trial in a special court in Jeddah for supporting terror activities said Wednesday charges made against him were false.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said here Sunday his country has no serious problem with Saudi Arabia and the two countries just take different points of view on regional developments.

The call for Saudi women to drive on June 17 as a form of protest for not being permitted to drive was a nonevent. It did not generate a huge response on the streets despite the wide support it had on virtual space.

Violence against children is on the rise in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The local media has given prominent coverage to a spate of such incidents following the death of the Taif boy Ahmad last week. The four-year-old boy was allegedly murdered by his stepmother.