In just over a year, King Salman has decreed plans for major economic reform, launched a more assertive foreign policy and set a line of succession that could guide the kingdom for decades to come.
President Obama departs Tuesday for Saudi Arabia, where he'll meet with King Salman and leaders of neighboring states. There's plenty to talk about: Relations have been strained on a number of fronts.
The group transferred to Saudi Arabia represented just over 10 percent of the population that remained at Guantanamo. It's another step toward Obama's goal of shuttering the facility by next year.
Recent forecasts for global growth have been ratcheted down, even as oil prices sink lower and put more money in consumers' wallets. Economists see several factors changing things.
Daring visual artists, whose edgy work challenges religious and political taboos, have become a critical voice in the conservative kingdom — where open calls for reform are a criminal offense.
King Salman's first year on the throne has brought big changes to the kingdom. It has a more aggressive foreign policy, is actively confronting Iran and is speaking out more openly than in the past.
Saudi Arabia's spate of 47 executions last week continued a trend from 2015, in which several countries that have the death penalty used it more often.
Robin Wright, who writes about Saudi Arabia and Iran in the current issue of The New Yorker, says upcoming Syrian peace talks have been compromised by the execution of an outspoken Shiite cleric.