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Saudi Arabia has ordered the segregation of men and women in local council meetings, in a setback to women’s rights in the ultraconservative kingdom.

Under the new rules, which follow the recent election of women to Saudi Arabia’s local councils, female representatives must now participate in the council meetings through a video link. The men will be able to hear their female colleagues, but not see them.

Females represent a fraction of the council members—38 out of 2,106 officials—but the same-room ban is a reminder of the challenges women face in Saudi Arabia, where they still can’t drive or travel abroad without the permission of a male relative.
“I am really upset,” said Samar Fatany, a women’s rights activist and columnist with Saudi Gazette newspaper of the rules, which were introduced last week by the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs but only gained national attention in recent days. “You don’t put them out there for show and then marginalize them.”

The government order represents a particularly strict imposition of the country’s widely applied gender segregation policy. It is in contrast with the Shura Council, an unelected advisory body to the king, where women and men sit in the same assembly hall.

The elections in December were widely hailed at the time as a small but symbolic turning point for women’s rights in the kingdom. Yet the ruling underscores the continued sway of the country’s hard-line conservatives.

Conservative clerics protested against women’s participation before the election over concerns that it would lead to gender mixing and Westernization of society.

TEL AVIV—Three Palestinians carrying knives, guns and explosives attacked Israeli security forces at an entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City on Wednesday, killing an officer and seriously wounding another.

The attack happened after Israeli security forces stopped the Palestinians at Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate. Police later said the trio opened fire on the police before being shot and killed. The dead officer was identified as 19-year-old Hadar Cohen.

The attackers were found to be carrying explosives, and were planning a larger attack, according to Israeli authorities. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Jerusalem has been at the center of a wave of Palestinian attacks against Israeli security forces and civilians that began in September and spread across Israel and the Palestinian territories. Increased security in Jerusalem has reduced the numbers in recent weeks.

Israel’s military is coordinating with forces from the Palestinian Authority to calm the violence, Nitzan Alon, the Israeli military’s head of operations, told reporters in Tel Aviv, though he warned it could continue.

MELLITAH TERMINAL, Libya—A 9-foot-high wall built of fabric, sand and steel that can withstand a car bomb surrounds this seaside oil-and-gas complex, a barrier against militant attacks that many in Libya hope will soon be fortified by a national army under a central command.

Two rival factions that have spent years fighting for control of Libya are now locked in a political battle to form a unity government capable of defending their country and its oil industry against escalating attacks by Islamic State.

The political standoff has swelled U.S. worries of Libya turning into a hub for international Islamic State operations. Top national security advisers met last week with President Barack Obama over Islamic State as military leaders increasingly point to the need for stepped-up operations against the militant group, including in Libya.

Libya’s National Oil Co., among the country’s last functioning institutions since the fall of dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, issued a “cry for help” last month amid killings, car bombings, gas line sabotage and the burning of oil storage tanks by extremists. The attacks appeared aimed at undermining the peace process and Libya’s oil industry, which supplies 95% of state revenues.

Islamic State “fills the void” left by the lack of a unified government, said Fathi Ali Bashaagha, a Libyan lawmaker helping negotiate a United Nations-brokered power-sharing agreement between the two rival factions. Libya’s fight against extremists has fallen largely to militias with varying allegiances.

Pope Francis gave his first-ever interview on China and the Chinese people on Jan. 28 to Asia Times columnist and China Renmin University senior researcher Francesco Sisci. The Pope urged the world not to fear China’s fast rise in a historic one-hour interview at the Vatican. He said the Chinese people are in a positive moment and delivered a message of hope, peace and reconciliation as an alternative to war, hot or cold. The pontiff also sent Chinese New Year’s greetings to the Chinese people and President Xi Jinping, the first extended by a Pope to a Chinese leader for the Lunar New Year in 2,000 years.

Sisci’s exclusive interview took place in a Vatican hall decorated with a painting of the Holy Mary Undoer of Knots, in which she performs the miracle of untying impossible knots.

ROME–He felt it immediately, or so I sensed, and he tried to put me at ease. He was right. I was in fact nervous. I had spent long hours hammering down every detail of the questions I was going to ask, and he had wanted time to think and churn them over. I asked for an interview on broad cultural and philosophical issues concerning all Chinese, of which over 99% are not Catholic. I didn’t want to touch on religious or political issues, of which other Popes, at other times had spoken.

I hoped he could convey to common Chinese his enormous human empathy by speaking for the first time ever on issues that worry them daily – the rupture of the traditional family, their difficulties in being understood and understanding the western world, their sense of guilt from past experiences such as the Cultural Revolution, etc. He did it and gave the Chinese and people concerned about China’s fast rise reasons for hope, peace and conciliation with each other.

The Pope believes the Chinese are in a positive movement. He says they should not be scared of this, nor should the rest of the world. He also believes the Chinese have a great legacy of wisdom that will enrich them and everybody and will help all to find a peaceful path forward. This interview is, in some respects, the Pope’s way of blessing China.

Sisci: What is China for you? How did you imagine China to be as a young man, given that China, for Argentina, is not the East but the far West? What does Matteo Ricci mean to you?