Mecca slowly stirred from a seven-month hibernation on Sunday as pilgrims trickled in after Saudi authorities partially lifted a coronavirus ban on performing umrah - a pilgrimage to Islam's two holiest sites that is undertaken at any time of year.

On Sunday (September 13, 2020), Al-Bilad newspaper, owned by Prime Minister's son Ali bin Khalifa, said that the limited edition newspaper managed to recover its Twitter account, four weeks after being hacked.

A group of Saudi dissidents exiled in Britain, the US and elsewhere announced the launch of an opposition party on Wednesday, the first organized political resistance under King Salman's rule.

Jared Kushner, adviser and son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, visited Bahrain to pressure it for normalization with Israel, like the UAE, Reuters reported.

Bahrain said Wednesday it was committed to the creation of a Palestinian state in talks with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, implicitly rejecting his push for Arab countries to swiftly normalise ties with Israel.

Informed sources said that Jared Kushner, the senior adviser and son-in-law of the US President Donald Trump, will visit Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman in early September to persuade Gulf leaders to normalize relations with Israel, as the UAE did, the Middle East Monitor website reported.

The Saudi Embassy in Lebanon attacked the Bahraini Al-Bilad newspaper accusing it of fabricating news attributed to Saudi Ambassador Walid Al-Bukhari, stressing that it reserves its right to take legal action against the newspaper.

Saudi Arabia's cabinet approved an agreement with Chevron Saudi Arabia (SAC) regarding the Neutral Zone between the kingdom and Kuwait, the state news agency said late on Tuesday.

Since 2011, the Bahraini government has proven two things; the first is that its actions are not based on national logic and do not take into consideration public interest, and the second is that the sovereign decision of the state was handed over to the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia's oil giant Aramco will raise its domestic gasoline prices for August, state TV reported on Monday.

A former top-ranking Saudi intelligence official living in exile in Canada alleged in a lawsuit filed in a U.S. court on Thursday that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent a team to kill him in 2018 but the effort was foiled by Canadian authorities.

Millions of people around the world are still traumatized by the tragic explosion that rocked the Lebanese capital of Beirut on Wednesday, August 4, 2020.

Spain's former king Juan Carlos has decided to leave his country, a dramatic exit designed to protect the monarchy after a barrage of corruption allegations surfaced against him.

The Saudi Embassy in Bahrain announced the reopening of border crossings (July 23, 2020) for the return of Saudi citizens and their family members without requesting prior permission, noting that Saudis coming to Bahrain through the airport will be subject to a 10-day quarantine period.

Countries of the energy-rich Gulf are expected to accumulate $490 billion in deficits by 2023 due to the double hit of low oil prices and the coronavirus slowdown, Standard and Poors said in a report.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Greece, and Cyprus sent a note verbale to the Secretariat of the United Nations, urging the UN not to register the maritime boundaries deal signed between Turkey and Libyan Prime Minister of the Government of the National Accord (GNA) Fayez al-Sarraj, according to a well-placed source at the UN, reported the Middle East News Agency.

Saudi Arabia will reopen King Fahd Causeway on July 27, 2020, with the setting of strict protocols to limit the spread of the coronavirus, Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported.

Saudi Arabia's central bank governor said the International Monetary Fund's economic contraction forecast for Saudi Arabia was "more pessimistic" than Saudi Arabia's own forecasts.

Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, expressed his "continued concern" over Loujain Hathloul's treatment in a letter sent to Saudi Arabia's US ambassador, Reema bint Bandar Al-Saud.

The number of novel coronavirus cases in the six Gulf Arab states has doubled in a month to more than 400,000, as the region's two biggest economies this week fully lifted curfews imposed to combat the infection.