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Saudi Arabia said on Saturday it would issue fines for 19 offences related to public decency, such as immodest dress and public displays of affection, as the Muslim kingdom opens up to foreign tourists.

a visa regime allowing holidaymakers from 49 states to visit one of the world’s most closed-off countries

Violations listed on the new visa website also include littering, spitting, queue jumping, taking photographs and videos of people without permission and playing music at prayer times

The United States on Tuesday barred from entering the country Mohammed al Otaibi, the former Saudi consul general in Istanbul in October 2018, when Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed there, the U.S. State Department said.

The United States has deployed additional American military forces to the kingdom to bolster its defenses after the Sept. 14 attack on its oil facilities, which Washington and Riyadh have blamed on Iran. Many members of the U.S. Congress, however, have questioned the longstanding U.S.-Saudi security alliance and backed several efforts - which have failed so far - to stop Trump from selling arms to the kingdom without congressional approval or providing support to the Saudi-led military coalition fighting in Yemen.

Otaibi previously was the subject of a U.S. asset freeze for his alleged role in Khashoggi’s death. The designation also bars his family members from entering the United States.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced in Istanbul that the Fatih drilling ship has discovered reserves of 320 billion cubic metres of natural gas in the Black Sea, and that Turkey will start using this in 2023

Turkey depends on imports for its oil and gas requirements. Last year, consumption of natural gas in the country was 44.9 billion cubic metres, and 99 per cent of this came from countries such as Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan. The gas discovered by the Fatih will reduce this total dependence on foreign energy supplies and strengthen Ankara’s position in energy deals

Turkish research and exploration vessels are confident that new fields will be discovered, helping Turkey to move from being an energy importer to an exporter.

Egypt's security apparatus has a reputation abroad, and it's not a good one. Government officials, diplomats and agents of the state routinely document the activities of those who criticize the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi

their activities gained a significant boost following the 2013 coup that unseated Mohammed Morsi, the country's first democratically elected president, and installed Sissi as its leader

For critics, the message was unmistakably clear: Those who refuse to fall in line would meet the same fate as Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi, who was brutally killed in October 2018 by a team of Saudi agents after entering the Saudi consulate services in Istanbul. "It was a message to dissidents like myself that the game had changed. No longer were dissidents living abroad safe," said Amr Khalifa, an Egyptian journalist and political analyst residing in the US. "It has been read as a carte blanche by autocracies like Sissi's, especially after the incredibly docile reaction of the Trump administration."

on July 22, Moscow extracted a Turkish pledge for "creating conditions for a lasting and sustainable ceasefire” in Libya, the joint statement announced after a series of ministerial-level meetings between Ankara and Moscow. The “high-level consultations” were initiated during Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s visit to Istanbul on Jan. 9 to “de-escalate the situation on the ground and pave the way for a political process in Libya." Turkey and Russia disclosed that they agreed on four points, of which the following two are the most important: "Continue joint efforts, including encouraging the Libyan parties, with a view to creating conditions for a lasting and sustainable cease-fire,” and “facilitate the advancement of the intra-Libyan political dialogue in line with the conclusions of the Berlin Conference” that was held in September 2019 with the participation of major powers.

Turkey committed itself, upon Russian demand, to refrain from going to war for Sirte and al-Jufra

a Turkish-Egyptian war looks to have been averted

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan views the world with both grievance and a sense of opportunity. In a major speech Oct. 1, he assailed the failures of the post-World War II international system, declaring, “There is no chance left for this distorted order, in which the entire globe is encumbered by a handful of greedy people, to continue to exist the way it currently does.”

He described Turkey as a country that “cannot use the same methods as the states that have no roots no traditions, and no morals, and which derive their power from colonialism and greed."

Erdogan’s approach speaks to Turkey’s Islamic and Ottoman past, including in his newly assertive role on the Palestinian issue, as Fehim Tastekin and Adnan Abu Amer report. “We had to leave [Jerusalem] in tears during the First World War,” Erdogan said this week. “It is still possible to come across traces of the Ottoman resistance. So Jerusalem is our city, a city from us.” 

After detaining the men for more than a month, the Saudis returned them to Libya, but not to the internationally recognized government in Tripoli, the Government of National Accord or GNA — as they were required to do by international law. Instead, they dispatched them to a rival and unrecognized administration in eastern Libya, aligned with the anti-Islamist militia commander Gen. Khalifa Haftar, who was backed by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. It was not a repatriation, then, but a rendition. And the Saudis likely knew full well what lay in store for the men at the hands of their bitter foe.In the months ahead, the two Libyans, who hailed from the seaside town of Az Zawiyah west of Tripoli, were incarcerated in eastern Libya’s most notorious prisons, where they were allegedly tortured by pro-Haftar militias

Released from captivity a year and half later after pledging support to Haftar, one of the men, a militia commander named Mahmud bin Rajab, reneged on his promise and played a role in thwarting Haftar’s plan in April 2019 to quickly seize Tripoli — a scheme that Saudi Arabia had promised to bankroll and that received military support from the UAE and Egypt, among other countries

For the Saudis and their autocratic Arab allies, the saga of the Zawiyans’ captivity was but one blunder in their larger Libyan misadventure, which has handed their rival Turkey uncontested influence over much of western Libya

Erdogan’s obsession with low interest rates and an economic policy that depends on credit growth, wage increases, tax forgiveness and free gas partly handed him another term during last month’s elections, despite runaway inflation. Yet it remains problematic. The government used backdoor methods to stabilise the lira ahead of the polls, and burned through all the central bank’s reserves.

Since 2021, Erdogan has also propped up his economic programme through a series of currency swap or deposit deals with regional neighbours such as Qatar, the UAE, Russia and Azerbaijan.

inflation is still near 40 percent as of May and the trade deficit hit $57.8bn in the first five months of 2023, jumping nearly 30 percent year on year

Since Kais Saied's assumption of the Tunisian presidency in 2019, the number of African migrants who have arrived in Tunisia without being stopped or registered has dramatically increased. “Officially, 10,000 irregular migrants have crossed the borders from Libya to Tunisia during the first half of 2022”, M.E., a former UNHCR employee in Medenine revealed. In reality, the numbers are much bigger.

it is believed foreign migrants in Tunisia far exceed a million. 

Since the start of his tenure, Saied has put the army and the police at the behest of his political project. After his referendum on a new constitution, Saied sacked and replaced nine high-ranking police officers. Furthermore, Saied's Interior Minister Taoufik Charfeddine has been appointing his own friends to key positions in the police and the National Guard.

Why it matters: Turkey has been conducting energy exploration in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and western Black Sea. Ankara's activities in the eastern Mediterranean have been a source of major contention between Greece, Cyprus and Turkey over conflicting territorial claims.  The tensions reached a high point last October when Turkish forces turned back a Cypriot research vessel for allegedly entering Turkish territory. Yet, revival of the exploratory talks between Ankara and Athens last year offered a diplomatic offramp to the escalation. In March, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul, following third round of talks between the two parties on Feb. 22