Saudi Arabia has registered its first female trainee advocate, paving the way for women to practise as lawyers in the kingdom where strict Islamic Sharia law applies, an activist said on Tuesday.

A Saudi newspaper says the kingdom’s religious police are now allowing women to ride motorbikes and bicycles but only in restricted, recreational areas.
The Al-Yawm daily on Monday cited an unnamed official from the powerful religious police as saying women can ride bikes in parks and recreational areas but they have to be accompanied by a male relative and dressed in the full Islamic head-to-toe abaya.
Saudi Arabia follows an ultraconservative interpretation of Islam and bans women from driving.
Women are also banned from riding motorcycles or bicycles in public places.
The newspaper didn’t say what triggered the lifting of the ban.
The official says women may not use the bikes for transportation but “only for entertainment” and that “to avoid harassment” they should shun places where young men gather.

Saudi Arabia today executed seven men convicted of armed robbery despite last-minute appeals by international rights groups that their lives be spared, a witness in the southern city of Abha said.

John Kerry was on Monday holding talks with his counterparts from six Gulf monarchies on the war in Syria and Iran’s disputed atomic programme, on his first visit to the Gulf as US secretary of state.

Denied the right to travel without consent from their male guardians and banned from driving, women in Saudi Arabia are now monitored by an electronic system that tracks any cross-border movements.

S

British Prime Minister David Cameron suggested on Tuesday that Syria’s president Bashar Assad could be allowed safe passage out of the country if that option would guarantee an end to the nation’s civ

A gas tanker truck exploded on a main road in the Saudi capital on Thursday, killing at least 22 people,
injuring about 111 others and leaving a trail of destruction, officials said.

The lorry veered

Saudi Arabia has threatened to block YouTube in the kingdom if Google does not respond to a request to deny access to an anti-Islam film produced in the United States, the official SPA news agency rep

Saudi Arabia has called for an extraordinary summit of Muslim leaders to be held next month to address risks of 'sedition' threatening Muslim countries, state news agency SPA reported on Sunday.

Saudi sportswomen, who have been given the go-ahead to compete in the Olympics for the first time in London later this month, must respect the ultra-conservative kingdom's rules, its sports chief said