Saudi Arabia - Page 20

Google has removed an app from the Google Play store which encouraged gay people to go through “conversion therapy,” following complaints from LGBT groups. Google still hasn’t removed an app which allows users to report “heresy” to Indonesia’s strict Muslim government, however, nor has the company removed a Saudi Arabian app which allows men to track women and limit their movement.

Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar, who has conquered well over half the country despite the international community formally recognizing an entirely different government as legitimate, was a guest of Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz in Riyadh on Wednesday. Details of their conversation are scarce, but Haftar’s first visit to Saudi Arabia seems like a significant event.

A Dutch art investigator announced Tuesday he found a Pablo Picasso painting stolen off a Saudi sheikh’s yacht in 1999.

Syria’s state-run media published photos of citizens marching in the streets on Tuesday to protest U.S. President Donald Trump’s proclamation recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. The Syrian regime’s patrons in Iran denounced the decision, while the increasingly Islamist government of Turkey vowed to fight the U.S. and Israel at the United Nations.

U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Matthew Tueller on Thursday blamed the Iran-backed Houthi insurgency for deliberately stalling implementation of a peace deal brokered by the United Nations.

Beirut — Saudi women held in detention for nearly a year have been charged following contact with foreign media and activists, Human Rights Watch said Thursday, after they went on trial for undermining national security.

Saudi Arabia began the trial of women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul on Wednesday, with a prison sentence of up to 20 years reportedly on the line, at the same time Iran was throwing human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh in prison for 38 years plus a savage whipping.

Authorities in Saudi Arabia claim that the people behind the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi have been “brought to justice,” yet refused to provide details over who was responsible. 

Iran-allied Shiite Houthi rebels on Thursday reportedly hailed the U.S. Senate vote this week to end American support for their Saudi Arabia-led coalition rivals in Yemen, arguing that United States assistance has prolonged the conflict.

Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, on Wednesday accused other regional powers of funding “suspicious nuclear projects” and suggested Iran might be obliged to resume developing its own nuclear weapons in self-defense.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration is expected to tell Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat during his visit to New Delhi on Monday that the recent crackdown by the Sunni kingdom’s ally Pakistan against its domestic Islamic extremists remains “inadequate,” the Economic Times (ET) reports.

Jeff Bezos looks a lot like Ernst Blofeld, the fictional villain in several of the early James Bond movies. Is the resemblance just a coincidence? You decide.

Osama bin Laden is long dead, but his plans live on through American foreign policy. In 2001, al Qaeda consisted of only 400 ideologues in the far corners of the world. After the recent regime change wars in Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Syria, typical estimates place their membership at around 20,000. To top it all off, the American economy is out $5.6 trillion dollars for the whole failed project. This is not the legacy of a war to spread, or even protect, liberty and prosperity. Instead it is the legacy of an evil but gifted tactician, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Milan — A proposal to use 15 million euros in Saudi Arabian government funds for Milan’s La Scala opera house came under fire on Tuesday because of anger over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

A deputy commander of Iran’s terror-linked Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in a recent speech boasted about waging jihad against its enemies, claiming that the United States “has been defeated,” Israel is “struggling to survive,” and the Sunni Saudi Arabia regime will not last, a non-profit group that monitors Middle East media reported this week.

A United Nations donor conference has seen donations to the war-torn country of Yemen reach $2.6 billion in efforts to ease the suffering of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

“Global indifference” to human rights violations across the Middle East has allowed repressive regimes to get away with crimes that they would not elsewhere, according to the latest report by Amnesty International.

TEL AVIV – European nations must follow the U.S. and cancel the nuclear agreement with Iran which seeks to conquer Europe as part of its hegemonic project, Syrian opposition activist Issam Zeitoun told Breitbart News.

During a town hall on CNN on Monday, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) defended his refusal to call Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro a dictator by saying that while the last election in Venezuela wasn’t democratic, “there are still democratic operations

“Oil prices getting too high. OPEC, please relax and take it easy,” he wrote on Twitter. “World cannot take a price hike – fragile!”

Princess Rima bint Bandar al-Saud is Saudi Arabia’s next ambassador to the U.S. – the first woman to take on an envoy role for the Islamic kingdom.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, visiting Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, made a comment on Friday about China’s right to defend itself against terrorism that has been widely interpreted as a tacit endorsement of the oppression of the Uighur Muslims of Xinjiang province.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday, capping a tour of Asia that was widely seen as the Saudis “pivoting to the East” after losing Western friends over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. MBS also visited India and Pakistan on his way to China.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi welcomed his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif to Beijing on Tuesday, stressing the importance of China’s relationship with Iran and telling Zarif he became a “famous person” in China with his speech at the Munich Security Conference on Sunday.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, in remarks to reporters in India on Wednesday, described terrorism and extremism as a common threat and offered intelligence sharing and other cooperation with India in combating the menace.

BERLIN — Britain’s top diplomat is demanding that Germany relax its ban on arms sales to Saudi Arabia because they are affecting UK sales of weapons to the oil-rich kingdom.

The internationally recognized government of Yemen and Iran-allied Houthi rebels agreed over the weekend to start pulling out their forces from the strategically important port city of Hodeidah under a United Nations-sponsored deal, negotiators from the international body announced on Sunday.

Iran launched a new domestically produced missile submarine Sunday amid mounting tensions with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in the disputed waters of the Persian gulf.

In the context of the western demographic crisis and the booming developing world, free trade creates an incentive for corporate cooperation with authoritarian societies.

Saudi Arabia defended a smartphone app Saturday which allows men to track women’s movements and potentially “stop them leaving the country.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote an open letter to Google and Apple, Monday, demanding that the Big Tech Masters of the Universe stop hosting a Saudi Arabian app which allows men to track women’s movements and stop them from leaving the country.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said he would “take a look” at a Saudi Arabian app being hosted by Apple on the App Store, which allows men to track women’s movements and stop them from escaping the country.

The Mideast conference in Poland starting Wednesday offers Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an opportunity to flaunt in public what he has long boasted about happening behind the scenes — Israel’s improved relations with some Gulf Arab nations.

Iran-allied Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen are preventing aid workers from accessing aid for millions of Yemenis, putting the food “at risk of rotting” while an estimated 20 million people in the country find themselves on the brink of starvation, the United Nations warned Monday.

The Palestinians on Monday called on Arab nations to boycott or downgrade their representation at a Mideast summit co-hosted by the United States, as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas traveled to Saudi Arabia to discuss “the dangers facing the Palestinian cause.”

Apple and Google are facing criticism for hosting a Saudi Arabian smartphone app on their platforms which allows men to track women’s movements and “stop them leaving the country.”