Saudi Arabia

A federal district court judge, ruling in New York, on Thursday day turned down a motion by lawyers for thousands of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and commercial insurers that lost billions at ground zero that Saudi Arabia be reinstated as a defendant in their lawsuit seeking compensation. Judge George B. Daniels said the issue had been examined by federal district court judge Richard Conway Casey in 2005, and he found no grounds for sustaining the lawsuit against Saudi Arabia.

In late January 2000, two young men who would later participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings and attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon met with a young Saudi in San Diego. The Saudi, Omar al-Bayoumi, had earlier been the focus of a Federal Bureau of Investigation antiterrorism probe and had close ties to the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles. He offered to put up the two hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, in his apartment for a short time, helped them find a place of their own, and gave them money.

Iraqi leader calls for united nation BAGHDAD - Iraq's prime minister called Sunday for unity and greater political stability to ensure the country's security after the end of the U.S. military presence. Speaking at a televised celebration in Baghdad, Nouri al-Maliki warned Iraqis against "excessive joy" over the departure of U.S. troops, saying the country's security situation remains perilous. The last U.S. combat soldiers left Dec. 18. Maliki called on all Iraqis to unite in the interest of the nation and stressed that Iraq needs stability if it hopes to remain secure and rebuild.

HONOLULU - The sale of $30 billion worth of F-15SA fighter jets to Saudi Arabia has been completed, boosting the military strength of a key U.S. ally in the Middle East to help counter Iran, the Obama administration announced Thursday. Under the agreement, the United States will send Saudi Arabia 84 new fighter jets and upgrades for 70 more. Production of the aircraft, which will be manufactured by Boeing Co., will support 50,000 jobs and have a $3.5 billion annual economic impact in the United States, the White House said.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Women in Saudi Arabia will not need a male guardian's approval to run or vote in municipal elections in 2015, when women will also run for office for the first time, a Saudi official said Wednesday. The change signifies a step forward in easing the kingdom's restrictions against women, but it falls far short of what some Saudi reformers are calling for. Shura Council member Fahad al-Anzi was quoted in the state-run al-Watan newspaper as saying that approval for women to run and vote came from the guardian of Islam's holiest sites, the Saudi king, and that therefore women will not need a male guardian's approval.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - A report given to a high-level advisory group in Saudi Arabia claims that allowing women in the kingdom to drive could encourage premarital sex, a rights activist said Saturday. The ultraconservative stance suggests increasing pressure on King Abdullah to retain the kingdom's male-only driving rules despite international criticism. The activist, Waleed Abu Alkhair, said the document from a well-known academic was sent to the all-male Shura Council, which advises the monarchy.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia's monarchy moved into a critical period Saturday after the death of the heir to the throne opened the way for a new crown prince. The most likely candidate is a tough-talking interior minister who has led crackdowns on Islamic militants but also has shown favor to traditions such as keeping the ban on women's voting. A state funeral is planned for Tuesday in Riyadh for Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz al-Saud, 80, who died in New York after an unspecified illness, the official Saudi Press Agency said.

WASHINGTON - The alleged Iranian plot against the Saudi ambassador to Washington was "amateur hour," an unusually clumsy operation for Iran's elite foreign action unit, the Quds Force, U.S. officials said Wednesday as further stranger-than-fiction details emerged of the assassination gone wrong. The Iranians' would-be covert operative turned to a woman he met while working as a used car dealer, hoping to find a Mexican drug dealer-assassin, and wound up with an American informant instead, according to two U.S. law enforcement officials.

The recent killing in Yemen of the American-born al-Qaeda figure Anwar al-Awlaki, the return of the country's president, and a brutal crackdown on peaceful antigovernment protesters have brought tensions there to a dangerous level, threatening to plunge the country into civil war. But the international community has failed to take a stand, revealing a cold-blooded double standard on the Arab Spring uprisings. It's clear that the United States and its allies are interested only in "regime renovation" in Yemen, not regime change.