Saudi Arabia

They are a desert king and a military officer-turned-president. Drive through their capitals and their images glow from billboards and painted walls, old men with their eyes fixed everywhere, even as whispers grow about who will rise to replace them. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak are in their 80s, durable U.S. allies whose governments have crushed political dissent at home while playing leading roles across the Middle East. But these days, talk of succession reverberates as Washington, as well as Riyadh and Cairo, plans to navigate an era without two of the region's dominant personalities.

It was sometime after 2 a.m. when gunfire and mortars startled Oqaba Mohammed out of sleep. She thanked God she was alive and quickly gathered her four children, walking into the night and away from the only home she had ever known. "We had nothing but the clothes on our bodies, but I didn't look back," said Mohammed, who had carried her physically disabled daughter in one arm and her 15-month-old son in the other. "We walked for three days, from village to village, asking for food from ordinary people.

Despite success in shutting down the financing of terrorist groups within its borders, Saudi Arabia remains a top source of funding for Al Qaeda elsewhere and Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, the Government Accountability Office said in a report to Congress. The report does not name individuals or estimate how much money might be flowing to the terrorists. Since 2003, the Saudis have barred charities from transferring money outside the kingdom, but the GAO said that this hasn't prevented Saudi-based charities with branches abroad from serving as funding sources for terrorist groups.

Teresa Malof knew she wasn't in Kentucky anymore when a cleric issued a fatwa against her secret Santa gift exchange. Malof proposed the idea at the King Fahad National Guard Hospital, where she has worked for more than a decade.

President Bush began two days of talks with Saudi leaders Monday as his administration sent formal notice to Congress of a controversial U.S. sale of "smart bomb" technology to this desert kingdom. The visit here with Saudi King Abdullah is one of the most diplomatically challenging stops of the president's six-nation passage across the Middle East. Bush is pressing the Saudis to support both peacemaking efforts between the Israelis and Palestinians and U.S.

President Bush and Saudi leaders tangled Tuesday over the price of oil, with the president reminding this wealthy desert kingdom that U.S. purchases could fall if the American economy slips and with a Saudi official refusing to commit his country to greater production to reduce costs at the pump. Bush said the price of oil, driven up by growing demand in the United States but an even greater increase in China and India, had become "painful for our consumers."

Saudi Arabia, appearing Thursday for the first time before a United Nations women's rights panel, faced tough questions over restrictions on "virtually every aspect of a woman's life" in the kingdom. The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women monitors adherence to a 1979 international bill of rights for women. Saudi Arabia ratified that pact in 2000, with the proviso that Islamic Sharia law would prevail if there were any contradiction with its provisions.

Even as smiling members of the Saudi royal family feted President Bush and his entourage this week, presenting the lame-duck leader with an ornamental sword, Saudi Arabia's most prominent English-language daily stabbed him with a pen over his aggressive Iran policy. "Whatever threat Iran may constitute, now or in the future, must be addressed peaceably and through negotiations," said an unsigned editorial in Tuesday's Arab News.

The U.S. primaries are an enticing, confusing political drama for a Middle East looking for an American president who can offer security and repair years of Bush administration policies widely seen as disastrous. The next U.S. president will inherit the Iraq war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a rising Iran and competition from the growing economies of India and China for oil in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations.

If Cal Poly San Luis Obispo had wanted to start an engineering program for a university in someplace like Norway, the proposal probably would have sailed through without much comment either on campus or off. But the school's plan to start an engineering department in Saudi Arabia is a different story.