Summary: despite what was, by all accounts, a challenging discussion at the OPEC+ table last weekend, Saudi Arabia appears to have engineered a pragmatic outcome consistent with its drive to stabilise the oil price.
Summary: a meeting shrouded in secrecy may move the Taliban away from their fanatical repression of women and girls.
Summary: as Egypt’s debt load mounts inexorably the rate of reform including the demand from lenders to demilitarise the economy is moving so slowly it may precipitate a banking collapse.
Summary: a short ceasefire that was ignored more than it was honoured is coming to an end and the prognosis for a peaceful solution remains grim unless the US and other Western nations bring pressure to bear on the states backing rival sides: Egypt and the UAE.
Summary: for more than a decade the government of Bahrain has used the harsh repression of individual rights and the banning of protests to silence critics but this week saw the detention of a prominent cleric bring people defiantly into the streets.
Summary: COP28, scheduled to take place in Dubai from 30 November to 12 December, has invited the Syrian president to attend as the Arab world continues its rehabilitation of a leader once reviled as a pariah.
Summary: as peace talks remain stuck in uncertainty, one piece of good news is the release in two tranches of cohorts of prisoners held by both sides of the conflict.
Summary: talks need to resume to achieve a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in the Middle East, and build on the recent thawing of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Summary: as his allies and former Arab critics rally around the Syrian president he is using the lure of lucrative reconstruction contracts to strengthen his position.
Summary: Yemen remains a country where tragedy in the form of a deadly stampede and hope in the shape of a prison release ahead of a potential peace deal stand side by side.
