Saudi Arabia | featured news

A new virus from the same family as SARS which sparked a global alert in September has now killed two people in Saudi Arabia, and total cases there and in Qatar have reached six, the World Health Organisation said.

Celebratory gunfire at a wedding party in eastern Saudi Arabia on Tuesday night brought down an electric cable, killing 23 people, a local civil defence official said. “At the wedding, the cable fell on a metal door and the 23 people who died were all electrocuted,” Eastern Province official Abdullah Khashman said by phone.

A militant who fought alongside Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan and is now the leader of a group affiliated with Al-Qaeda in South Yemen has struck a deal with the United States and Saudi Arabia to send 5,000 Al-Qaeda fighters into Syria according to reports out of the Middle East.

US prosecutors are looking into whether British bank HSBC was involved in laundering money for Mexican drug cartels and moving cash for Saudi Arabian banks with ties to terrorists, The New York Times reported Saturday.

More foreign fighters claiming allegiance to al-Qaida have reportedly joined rebels in war-torn Aleppo, deepening the regional implications of the conflict in Syria. According to Zeina Khodr, a journalist with news channel Al Jazeera, "Arab fighters from Saudi Arabia and Egypt who didn't want to be filmed" were operating in the city. Some reportedly claimed allegiance to al-Qaida.

A "pervasively polluted" culture at HSBC Holdings Plc allowed the bank to act as financier to clients seeking to route shadowy funds from the world's most dangerous and secretive corners, including Mexico, Iran,the Cayman Islands, Saudi Arabia and Syria, according to a scathing U.S. Senate report issued on Monday.

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz al-Saud has died in Geneva, Saudi state television said on Saturday, citing a royal court statement.

A leading women's rights activist in Saudi Arabia writes an open letter to King Abdullah, urging him to lift a ban on women drivers.

Democratic and Republican government officials warned this morning that a United Nations summit in December will lead to a virtual takeover of the Internet if proposals from China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are adopted.

Widows and children of the former al-Qaeda chief arrive in the kingdom after being deported from Pakistan.