Tag Archives: Saudi Arabia

Alainna Liloia, University of Arizona Saudi Arabia is a notoriously difficult place to be a woman. The kingdom enforces a strict interpretation of Islamic law that sees the separation of men and women as a defining aspect of an Islamic society. It also puts men in charge of their female relatives. Under this “guardianship system,” as it’s known, Saudi women …

David B Roberts, King’s College London The spiking oil price has turned attention, as ever, to Saudi Arabia. The state has long enjoyed a deserved reputation as the industry’s key player because of its ability to quickly turn on the taps to pump extra oil onto an overheating market to bring the price down. Despite the March 2022 visit of …

Things between Saudi King Salman and Turkish President Erdogan have become rather tense. AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici Nader Habibi, Brandeis University The Oct. 2 disappearance of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi at his country’s consulate in Istanbul has put a spotlight on the deteriorating relations between Turkey and the Persian Gulf kingdom. Articles based on anonymous accounts from Turkish officials report …

Veronika Poniscjakova, University of Portsmouth Saudi Arabia recently sentenced Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani to 45 years in prison after she had expressed her views on social media. This comes just a couple of weeks after a Leeds University student, Salma al-Shehab, was sentenced to 34 years in prison for using Twitter to retweet views of activists who are critical of …

In an effort to increase tourism, Saudi Arabia recently eased its strict dress code for foreign women, allowing them to go without the body-shrouding abaya robe still mandatory for Saudi women. FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP via Getty Images Alainna Liloia, University of Arizona Arab women, long relegated to the private sphere by law and social custom, are gaining new access to public …

H as in hot air. Shaun Hempel Brian Scott-Quinn, University of Reading “Britain will become the Qatar of hydrogen,” Boris Johnson declared as the government laid out its 368-page strategy for reaching net zero emissions by 2050. It sounds magnificent, but what does it mean in practice? To meet its net zero targets, the UK needs to convert from an …

Eleanor Scerri, Author provided Julien Louys, Griffith University; Gilbert Price, The University of Queensland; Huw Groucutt, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and Michael Petraglia, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History If you stood in the middle of the Nefud Desert in central Arabia today, you’d be confronted on all sides by enormous sand …

Shutterstock/Michael715 Christina Philippou, University of Portsmouth Many Newcastle United fans cheered the announcement on October 7 that their club had finally been sold for £305 million. The sale, to a consortium headed up by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, adds to a long list of clubs bought by the mega-rich, including Manchester City (owned by Sheikh Mansour), Arsenal (Stan Kroenke) …

Timo A Kivimäki, University of Bath The Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli’s visit to Saudi Arabia in the summer of 2017 was a deal maker. There was agreement on a US$20 billion Sino-Saudi investment fund, along with discussions of nuclear energy projects and other economic agreements worth nearly US$70 billion. So what is going on between the two countries? Why …

The World Bank’s ease of doing business index incentives countries to do whatever they can to improve their ranking. Jongho Shin/iStock via Getty Images Fernanda G Nicola, American University The World Bank, a behemoth of an organization that provides tens of billions of dollars in aid to mostly developing countries, is in the middle of one of its biggest scandals …