Dozens of Saudi families flocked to the movies on Friday for the first time in almost 40 years after the lifting of a ban on a form of entertainment once deemed corrupting and un-Islamic.

Bahrain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has strongly condemned the shooting incident which targeted a security checkpoint in Asir region, in Saudi Arabia, leaving a number of security servicemen dead, extending its deepest condolences and consolation to the bereaved families and relatives.

Four members of Saudi Arabia’s security forces were killed and four others wounded in clashes with gunmen on Thursday at a checkpoint in the southwestern Asir province, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV said.

Saudi Arabia has so far refrained from making a formal statement on the huge oil discovery in Bahrain.

Coalition-backed forces killed two al Qaeda militants in Yemen in a raid in the southern province of Abyan on Wednesday, the Saudi government media office said.

Two Saudi Arabian-linked banks have become the first lenders with ties to the kingdom to sign a debt settlement plan with Ahmad Hamad al-Gosaibi and Brothers (AHAB), the company’s chief executive said, opening the way for the conglomerate to try to push through a multibillion-dollar deal with creditors.

Saudi Arabia has put on hold privatization plans for King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh, the kingdom’s second biggest airport, sources familiar with the matter said.

So far, Saudi reactions to this discovery have been limited to popular Twitter pages who have sent good wishes to Bahrain amid official state silence.

An Arab League summit called on Sunday for an international probe into the “criminal” use of chemical weapons in Syria and condemned what it saw as Iran’s interference in the affairs of other countries.

Spain and Saudi Arabia have signed a framework agreement to sell the Gulf Arab state warships under a deal estimated to be worth around 1.8 billion euros (£1.6 billion).

Fashionable women, dark-haired Saudis and blonde Eastern Europeans alike, fill the gold-trimmed halls of Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel, marking the start of Saudi Arabia’s first-ever fashion week.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron took on critics of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday, saying it was too easy to criticize the young leader’s haste to reform and urged detractors to give him time.

Saudi Arabia’s air defense forces intercepted three ballistic missiles fired at Riyadh and other cities on Wednesday by Yemen’s Houthis who have stepped up attacks recently, threatening to escalate a rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The spokesman for a Saudi-led coalition said on Tuesday that its military campaign in Yemen was not aimed at establishing a permanent presence along the country’s West coast but at restoring its internationally recognized government.

Yemen’s armed Houthi movement said on Wednesday it had launched a drone strike on a facility belonging to oil giant Saudi Aramco in southern Saudi Arabia - though the company said its plants there were operating “normally and safely”.

France is to help Saudi Arabia set up a national orchestra and opera, a minister announced Monday, a further sign of major cultural changes underway in the ultra-conservative Gulf kingdom.

Saudi Aramco will sign eight deals with French companies worth $10 billion, the chief executive of the state-run oil giant told Saudi-run Al Arabiya TV.

Saudi Arabia plans to build a military base and nuclear dump on a proposed project that would turn the peninsula of Qatar into an island, the Al Riyadh newspaper reported.

Hackers have attacked networks in a number of countries including data centers in Iran where they left the image of a U.S. flag on screens along with a warning: “Don’t mess with our elections”, the Iranian IT ministry said on Saturday.

A Saudi soldier was killed during a raid against suspected militants in the town of al-Awamiya in the kingdom’s eastern Qatif province, Al Arabiya TV reported.