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only women over 30 would be allowed to drive and they would need permission from a male relative — usually a husband or father, but lacking those, a brother or son. They would be allowed to drive from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday through Wednesday and noon to 8 p.m. on Thursday and Friday. It wasn’t immediately clear why the restrictions would be different Thursday and Friday ... The conditions would also require that a woman driver wear conservative dress and no makeup, the official said. Within cities, they can drive without a male relative in the car,...

Israelis—along with all the other disappointed allies—are learning how little it pays to be on Barack Obama’s good side Israeli security fence on Egyptian border, and Hamas Terror Tunnels Let’s just say it up front and avoid tip-toeing around with politically correct language. President Obama and his administration are the most anti-Israel to have held office and likely the most anti-Semitic. Forget about his public declarations of friendship and support for Israel. For six years Obama has demonstrated his antipathy toward the only democratic nation in the Middle East, the Jewish state. That’s why an anonymous administration official felt free...

Oil prices tumbled to their lowest point in more than two years after Saudi Arabia unexpectedly cut prices for crude sold to the U.S., likely paving the way for further declines and adding to pressure on American energy producers. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia raised the prices for its oil in other locations, including Asia, where the country had cut its prices for four consecutive months.

CAIRO — The Arab League warned Sunday that Israel has reached a “red line” after fresh clashes in Jerusalem, urging international pressure to stop what it branded “violations” in the holy city. Clashes around the flashpoint Temple Mount and the al-Aqsa Mosque compound — the third holiest site in Islam and Judaism’s holiest — prompted Israel on Thursday to close the site for a day. The Temple Mount and adjacent neighborhoods have seen months of violence, with the mosque compound a rallying point for Palestinian resistance to perceived Jewish attempts to take control of it...

It hasn't made much noise worldwide, but Iran's rapidly deteriorating relationships with several African countries is huge news across the continent. On February 16, the Nigerian Federal High Court in Lagos began the prosecution of an alleged member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Azim Aghajani, and a Nigerian associate, Usman Abbas Jega. They are accused of arms smuggling. This video link is in Arabic, but is very self-explanatory. It is of the opening day of the court proceedings.The story is a classic, just one of many on the Dark Continent nowadays: In late October 2010, Nigerian intelligence officials...

CAIRO (AP) — U.S. Arab allies Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are discussing the creation of a military pact to take on Islamic militants, with the possibility of a joint force to intervene around the Middle East, The Associated Press has learned. The alliance would also serve as a show of strength to counterbalance their traditional rival, Shiite-dominated, Iran. Two countries are seen as potential theaters for the alliance to act, senior Egyptian military officials said: Libya, where Islamic militants have taken over several cities, and Yemen, where Shiite rebels suspected of links to Iran have...

Those banking on a rebound in oil prices shouldn’t look down. Downstream, that is. Judging by third-quarter results reported last week by the likes of Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell , the downstream business—oil refining and marketing—is doing just fine. But results are backward-looking, and the quarter that ended in September only partly reflected recent turmoil in oil markets. Since Oct. 1, the Gulf Coast “crack spread,” a proxy for the margins U.S. refiners make on each barrel of oil they process, has plummeted to about $5.50 from almost $16. That is despite the fact that the price of...

$75 dollars a barrel – that’s the price crude oil would have to hit for frackers in North Dakota’s Bakken fields to feel pressure to slow new production, according to Greg Zuckerman, author of “The Frackers” and a special reporter at the Wall Street Journal. “All these guys have hedged. They’ve got production [and] they’ve already got the acreage. They’re not gonna stop but maybe they’ll kind of slow new stuff.” Fracking in other parts of the country, though, is likely to be much more resilient. In Texas’s Eagle Ford and Permian basin, Zuckerman says oil prices would have to...

join airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq, Syria Published September 15, 2014 FoxNews.com 542 Never autoplay videos White House officials have claimed that Arab nations have offered to join the U.S. in airstrikes against the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria, though no countries were specifically named. The New York Times reported that Secretary of State John Kerry had declined to say which states had offered to contribute air power, with White House officials saying that any announcement of specifics could wait until later this week. Kerry is scheduled to testify before congressional committees Wednesday and Thursday.

WASHINGTON — The vast majority of airstrikes launched against Sunni militant targets in Syria have been carried out by American war planes and ship-based Tomahawk cruise missiles, military officials said Tuesday, in what they described as the successful beginning of a long campaign to degrade and destroy the Islamic State. In disclosing the identities of the five Sunni Arab nations that joined or supported the attacks in Syria — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan and Qatar — the Obama administration sought to paint a picture of an international coalition resolute in its determination to take on the...

Over the past week a new geopolitical mystery emerged: an "unknown" party was launching airstrikes against Libya, which is already reeling in its latest political crisis where headlines such as this have become the norm: •MILITIA MEN SET HOUSE OF LIBYAN PM THENI ABLAZE: ARABIYA •LIBYA'S NEIGHBOURS AGREE NOT TO INTERVENE IN LIBYAN AFFAIRS, CALL FOR NATIONAL DIALOGUE The strikes puzzled all media outlets, including Reuters which just over the weekend reported that "Unidentified war planes attacked positions of an armed faction in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Saturday, residents and local media said. Local channel al-Nabaa said the planes...

<p>REYHANLI, Turkey — Anti-government media activists and rebel commanders gave a mixed assessment of U.S.-led airstrikes in northern Syria on Tuesday, saying that some of the Islamic State encampments hit had been evacuated and one building that was struck had been filled with displaced civilians, even as at least one major Islamic State base was seriously damaged and many fighters were killed.</p>

ISTANBUL — Vice President Joe Biden apologized to the United Arab Emirates Sunday for charging that the oil-rich ally had been supporting al Qaida and other jihadi groups in Syria's internal war, his second apology in as many days to a key participant in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State extremists.

Egyptian armed forces are preparing for the execution of an extensive operation inside Libya in order to fight the revolutionaries and support the militias that are loyal to the UAE in Tripoli and Benghazi including troops commandeered by Brigadier General Khalifa Haftar, high ranking officials revealed. The operation may include a possible ground invasion in East Libya with French aerial cover and funding from the UAE in order to enable Haftar to decisively win the battle, the sources told the Asrar Arabiya website. The site said Libyan Prime Minister Abdullah Al-Thani's visit to the UAE on Tuesday last week came...

UAE fighter pilot Mariam al-Mansouri shot to fame last week for her role in a US-led bombing campaign in Syria. While Americans hailed her pluck, for Arabs it's more complicated. JERUSALEM — Last week Mariam al-Mansouri, a F-16 pilot from the United Arab Emirates, was introduced to the world. Smiling out from under her helmet and hijab after launching air strikes in Syria, part of a US-led campaign against Islamic State, her image went viral. For some Americans, she was a sort of Katharine Hepburn meets Amelia Earhart who had shattered prevalent stereotypes of Arab women. A popular Internet meme...

The U.S. military and two Arab allies on Wednesday bombarded a dozen small-scale oil refineries in eastern Syria as part of an expanding campaign to cut off key sources of financing and fuel for the Islamic State, according to the Pentagon. ... The Islamic State is estimated to produce between 25,000 and 40,000 barrels of oil a day, earning as much as $1 million a day, according to industry experts. The attacks on the refineries came on a day when U.S. military forces reported hitting an Islamic State convoy in Syria near the Iraqi border and Syrian opposition groups reported...

PRIME Minister Tony Abbott has promised to send Australian military forces to the Persian Gulf to assist in attacks on the Islamic State. He told media in a press conference in Darwin today that he had decided to prepare and deploy an armed force to the UAE to assist the United States in its military action against the Islamic State’s forces in Iraq and Syria. He warned “should this extend into combat operations, it could go on for some time” Mr Abbott said his reaction to the latest video showing the execution of British aid worker David Haines was: “Shock,...

WATCH How This Gutsy ‘First’ Of A Kind Fighter Pilot Is Blowing Up Both ISIS Targets And Stereotypes Even as women in parts of the Arab world fight the prohibition against their driving a car on public roads... Even as women in parts of the Arab world fight the prohibition against their driving a car on public roads, one extraordinary Arab woman is driving an F-16 in the fight against Islamic State terrorism. Fox News confirms that 35-year-old Major Mariam Al Mansouri — the first female air force pilot from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — has taken part in...

For those to whom the recent US campaign against Syria seems a deja vu of last summer's "near-war" attempt to ouster its president Bashar al-Assad, which was stopped in the last minute due to some very forceful Russian intervention and the near breakout of war in the Mediterranean between US and Russian navies, it is because they are. And as a reminder, just like last year, the biggest wildcard in this, and that, direct intervention into sovereign Syrian territory, or as some would call it invasion or even war, was not the US but Saudi Arabia - recall from August...

“Skirt-fronting” could well become the new buzz word in international diplomacy The possibility of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott shirt-fronting Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit in Brisbane next month over the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH 17 in Ukrainian sovereign territory with the loss of all on board - including 38 Australians - has receded following Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s 25 minute meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the Asian Europe Summit held in Milan this week. Abbott had vowed: “I’m going to shirtfront Mr Putin. I am going to be saying to Mr...