Saudi Arabia’s annual inflation eased to 4.9 percent in June, its lowest level since September last year, despite a big rise in housing prices, official data showed on Tuesday. Inflation slowed from 5.1 percent in May. The month-on-month rate in June was unchanged from 0.2 percent in May, …
 Saudi Aramco has launched an investment arm to buy into companies that have developed technologies of strategic importance to Saudi Arabia and speed their deployment in the kingdom, the state-run energy group said. Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures LLC (SAEV) plans to invest in start-up and …
Saudi King Abdullah and Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz held separate meetings with U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the official Saudi Press Agency said, without saying where it got the information. The talks with Salman dealt with “matters …
Egypt’s benchmark index made its largest drop in three weeks yesterday after the new president ordered parliament to reconvene, challenging military authority, while Saudi Arabia shares also slid following protests in its oil-producing east. Cairo’s bourse fell 4.2%, its largest decline …
The introduction of a mortgage law in Saudi Arabia will improve the housing supply and social stability as well as provide diversification of the banking sector, says Fitch Ratings. However these benefits will not be instant because banks will approach the new market with caution. Saudi …
At the time of Iran’s renewed threat to close the strait in early 2012, Chatham House estimated that the capacity of the pipelines that bypass the strait was somewhere around 8 million bpd. However, in the past two weeks Saudi Arabia and the UAE announced separately that a further 3.15 million …
 According to Dr. Tawfeik Bin Abdul Aziz Suwilem, chairman of the board of the Awsar Society, there are now 6,000 foreign marriage permits applied for annually. This is a figure that has risen sharply in the last few years and he has started an awareness campaign to warn Saudi men of the dangers …
Amir is one of many middle-class Iranians who deeply admire the Turkish model of governance and look on at their neighbor’s international standing with envy. ‘When I was in Turkey years ago they didn’t even have color photography,’ Amir recalls, ‘but look at how powerful they have become now. …
As messy as it has been and unfinished as it remains, Yemen’s transition accomplished two critical goals: avoiding a potentially devastating civil war and securing the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had ruled the impoverished country for over three decades. It also cracked the …
 As global oil demand increases, even if only moderately, and production from mature areas declines, finding and developing additional oil will definitely be more challenging in the future. However, the view that marginal cost, which drives long-dated price at the back of the forward curve, …
From his mosque in south Lebanon, Sheik Ahmad Assir, a hard-line cleric, embodies a new trend in the Middle East: the rise of conservative Sunni Islamists openly opposed to their Shiite counterparts and their backers, Iran and Syria. Assir, 44, has become Lebanon’s chief rabble-rouser by …
International envoy Kofi Annan travelled to Tehran to seek support in resolving the conflict in Syria, warning of a disaster if his peace plan fails. Annan spoke after holding talks in Tehran on Tuesday with Ali Akbar Salehi, the Iranian foreign minister. ‘Iran can play a positive role,’ …
During the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which Pakistan-based handlers from Lashkar-e-Taiba provided instructions via voice-over-internet protocol communications, Indian intelligence heard an individual speaking with a Mumbai accent directing some of the gunmen on the ground. Last year that same …
But just as Iraqi politics heats up, the United States is rapidly losing its ability to decipher events in the country. ‘Half of our situational awareness is gone,’ an unnamed U.S. official told the Wall Street Journal in June. ‘More than half,’ a serving U.S. military officer told me when I …
 The city of Al Jubayl (or Jubail) is located on the coast of Saudi Arabia, along the Persian Gulf. The city has a history extending back more than 7,000 years, but since 1975 it has been associated with the petrochemical, fertilizer, and steel industries. At night, these industrial areas form a …
Baha Gov. Prince Mishari bin Saud yesterday expressed deep sorrow over the death of a Saudi man and the serious injuries to his wife and two children following a car chase involving them and officials of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Haia). Local press …
 Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L) and two other banks have abandoned talks on restructuring Dubai Group’s $10 billion debt and threatened to bring unprecedented legal action against the investment vehicle of Dubai’s ruler, sources close to the matter said. The walkout by RBS, German lender …
We learn that the Saudi government has passed a regulation that requires rent to be collected by landlords on a monthly basis. We learn that Saudi landlords find this onerous. Okay… but what’s the standard practice now? Is the entire lease paid up front, for the entire term of the lease? Is it …
Goodrich Corporation has received a contract from the U.S. Air Force to provide its advanced DB-110 airborne reconnaissance system for the Royal Saudi Air Force F-15S Modernization Program. The Foreign Military Sale (FMS) contract calls for Goodrich to provide 10 dual-band reconnaissance pods …
 A Saudi Arabian princess is seeking political asylum in the U.K., according to British reports. Princess Sara bint Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the niece of Saudi Arabia’s ruler, claims she faces persecution by members of her family and some of her home country’s authorities, according to …
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