Three blasts killed at least 17 people and wounded more than 50 in predominantly Shia districts of Baghdad on Tuesday, police and medical sources said.

Thousands of Saudis have signed a petition urging an end to the guardianship system giving men control over the work, study and even travel of female relatives, an activist said Tuesday.

Jordan’s judiciary yesterday slapped a media blackout on the murder of a Christian writer who was gunned down outside an Amman court where he faced charges over an anti-Islam cartoon.

Residents of Syria’s Aleppo yesterday faced worsening food and medical shortages as warplanes again pounded the city after Western powers at the UN accused Russia of war crimes.

Saudi Arabia will cut ministers' salaries by 20% and scale back financial perks for public sector employees, according to a cabinet statement and royal decree broadcast on state-run Ekhbariya TV on Monday.

Hundreds of Pakistani construction workers are to fly home from Saudi Arabia this week but without the salaries they have waited months to receive, embassy officials said.

The United Arab Emirates will finalise laws to more heavily regulate the sale of drones and their operations soon, aiming to minimise risks posed by unmanned aerial vehicles, an official at the aviation regulator said.

Saudi Arabia on Monday executed an Ethiopian woman convicted of killing a Saudi child, the interior ministry said.

Dozens of air strikes hit the northern Syrian city of Aleppo overnight, a monitor and defence worker said, continuing a fierce air campaign by Syrian government and allied forces since a ceasefire broke down almost a week ago.

Two members of the Turkish security forces were killed and eight others wounded on Monday in a roadside bombing by Kurdish militants in southeastern Turkey, local media reported.

An Omani court on Monday upheld a government order to permanently close a national newspaper and jailed three of its journalists for undermining the state, judicial sources said.

Saudi Aramco was "recruiting steadily" and hadn't laid off staff, Mohammed al-Qahtani, the oil giant's senior vice president of upstream said on Monday.