The Globalist - David Cassels' Current World Issue Blog

About a month after Saudi Arabia granted women the right to drive, the kingdom has announced another historic move: Starting next year, women will be allowed to attend sporting events in stadiums for the first time. Saudi Arabia’s General Sports Authority made the announcement Sunday,  tweeting  that preparations will begin to “accommodate families” in three stadiums in the major cities of Riyadh, Jiddah and Dammam. Two of the stadiums, the King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh and the King Abdullah Sports City in Jiddah, hold the highest seating capacity in the kingdom. “Sports stadiums in Saudi Arabia to open their doors to welcome women in 2018,” Princess Reema Bandar bint Al-Saud, the vice president for women’s affairs of the General Sports Authority, wrote on  Twitter . “The decision warms the hearts of the nation’s women,” she added. “Congratulations to us.” It is unclear exactly how the stadiums will regulate where women and children...

WASHINGTON – Facing mounting questions about the attack in Niger that left four US soldiers dead, the US military's top general on Monday pledged to be transparent about what the Pentagon knows. But that turned out to be precious little as Joint Chiefs Chairman Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford offered a new timeline, but few details, even as news reports emerged from the region suggesting that the US soldiers and their Nigerien partners were set up for the attack by residents of a village they were visiting. "The attackers, the bandits, the terrorists have never lacked accomplices among local populations," Almou Hassane, the mayor of Tongo Tongo, told the French-to-Africa service of the US government's Voice of America. A village chief in Tongo Tongo was arrested after the attack, VOA quoted Hassane as saying. The US news service reported that the arrest of Mounkaila Alassane was later confirmed by a Nigerien legislator. The editor of a newspaper in Niamey, Niger...

Trade ministers from the United States, Canada, and Mexico wrap up a contentious round of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) trade talks on Tuesday marked by aggressive U.S. demands that have left the future of the 23-year-old free trade pact in doubt. The proposals to drastically reshape NAFTA to help shrink U.S. trade deficits have cast a pall over the modernization talks, leaving some participants and analysts wondering how the NAFTA partners can avoid an impasse. The U.S. demands, previously identified as red lines by its neighbors, include forcing renegotiations every five years, reserving the lion's share of automotive manufacturing for the United States and making it easier to pursue import barriers against some Canadian and Mexican goods. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland are scheduled to meet and take stock of the negotiations before issuing statements at ...