Experts tell us the North American shale oil boom is responsible for low prices despite Middle East unrest. But the price slump serves Western aims of weakening Russia and Iran.
Protests were held in the Bahraini island city of Sitra against an agreement signed between the kingdom and Great Britain to establish a new military base in the Persian Gulf state.
A Bahrain court, actining in a suit brought by the Ministry of Justice, ordered the country's main Shi'ite opposition group al-Wefaq to suspend all activities.
Sh'iite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was convicted of sedition and other charges in Saudi Arabia and sentenced to death—posing greater sectarian tensions in the Gulf states.
Rights activist Nabeel Rajab faces criminal charges over his tweets that claimed Bahrain's security institutions were the first incubators for extremist ideology.
Warplanes flying from the USS George HW Bush carried out the first US air-strikes against ISIS targets in Syria, with planes from five Arab countries also participating in the raids.
Independent UN rights experts called on the government of Bahrain to release detained human rights activist Maryam al-Khawaja due to the absence of evidence against her.
Egypt called for an "Arab Alliance" to halt an ISIS advance on the Gulf States, as US air-strikes hit ISIS positions near Sinjar. Obama said there is no "timetable" for the strikes to end.
Kuwait's Supreme Court upheld a 10-year sentence for a man accused of posting Tweets that insulted the Prophet Mohammed and the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Bahrain's Ministry of Justice filed a suit seeking to suspend all activities of the main Shi'ite opposition group, whose leaders were accused of an illegal meeting with a US diplomat.
Kuwait's Supreme Court upheld the two-year prison sentence of opposition activist Hejab al-Hajeri for writing tweets found to be offensive to the country's emir.
With Field Marshal al-Sisi consolidating his rule in alliance with Mubarak-era "left-overs," a Qaedist insurgency is rapidly spreading from the Sinai to the rest of Egypt.
