VW sued by US justice department

In September last year, following an investigation by US regulators, VW admitted fitting the so-called defeat device on 11 million vehicles globally.

The scandal has hit sales of VWs worldwide.

The company has put aside billions of euros to deal with the fallout.

The lawsuit, on behalf of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), was filed on Monday in a federal court in Detroit, Michigan.

"The complaint alleges that nearly 600,000 diesel engine vehicles had illegal defeat devices installed that impair their emission control systems and cause emissions to exceed EPA's standards, resulting in harmful air pollution," the filing said.

It also alleges that VW "violated" clean air laws by selling cars that were different in design from those originally cleared for sale by the EPA.

"With today's filing, we take an important step to protect public health by seeking to hold Volkswagen accountable for any unlawful air pollution, setting us on a path to resolution," said assistant administrator Cynthia Giles for the EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. 

"So far, recall discussions with the company have not produced an acceptable way forward. These discussions will continue in parallel with the federal court action."

The department said the filing was just the first step in "bringing Volkswagen to justice".

The carmaker is also facing separate criminal charges, and a raft of class-action lawsuits filed by VW owners.

'Screwed up'

The EPA says that VW fitted many of its cars with a device that was able to recognise test conditions and adjust the engine settings accordingly, with the express purpose of giving distorted readings on nitrogen oxide emissions. 

The company admitted to "totally screwing up", and there has been a shake-up in the management structure and personnel as a result. Martin Winterkorn resigned as chief executive and was replaced with Matthias Mueller, the former boss of Porsche.

The carmaker is currently conducting an internal investigation that it says will "leave no stone unturned".

The scandal has hit VW hard. It will begin recalling millions of cars worldwide soon, and has set aside €6.7bn (£4.6bn) to cover costs. That resulted in the company posting its first quarterly loss for 15 years, of €2.5bn in late October.

With the lawsuits piling up, experts say the final costs are likely to be much higher than that.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Will Top Avatar‘s Box Office Record This Week

Star Wars: The Force Awakens rang in the new year by breaking even more box office records this weekend, raking in an estimated $88.3 million domestically.

That means that The Force Awakens earned the highest domestic third weekend ever, and its domestic total is now at $740.3 million. Earlier this weekend, it surpassed both Jurassic World ($652.3 million) and Titanic ($658.7 million) to become the second-highest grossing domestic movie ever (unadjusted for inflation), and within the next few days, it should dethrone Avatar ($760.5 million) to become the biggest domestic movie ever.

The Force Awakens also became the fastest (and only the second movie ever) to reach $700 million, doing it 16 days. Avatar took 72 days to hit that mark. The Force Awakens also set a new domestic record for the biggest New Year’s Day box office haul with $34.5 million.

Globally, The Force Awakens pulled in $184.6 million this weekend, bringing its worldwide total to a whopping $1.51 billion. It will soon surpass The Avengers ($1.52 billion) and Furious 7 ($1.515 billion) to become the fourth-biggest movie of all time. It’s also become IMAX’s second highest-grossing movie ever with a global total of $152 million, and in record time: The Force Awakens reached that total in only 19 days, as opposed to Avatar, which took 47 days. The Force Awakens has opened worldwide with the exception of China, where it will debut this weekend.

In other box office news from a galaxy not so far, far away, Daddy’s Home took second for the weekend, earning an estimated $29 million. The Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg-starring comedy debuted above expectations last weekend, and it held up well in its second outing, falling only 25 percent. Its domestic total is now at $93.7 million.

After an exclusive 70mm debut in only 100 theaters,The Hateful Eight went wide this week, expanding to 2,474 theaters and earning $16.2 million for third place. The Quentin Tarantino picture earned a B CinemaScore, and its domestic total is now at $29.6 million.

Holdovers Sisters and Alvins and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip rounded out the top five, and both have held up well since opening against The Force Awakens. The R-rated Sisters, which stars Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, fell only 11 percent and earned $12.6 million this weekend. Its domestic total is now at $61.7 million. Alvin and the Chipmunks fell 10 percent to earn $11.8 million for a total of $67.4 million.

At the specialty box office, Anomalisa debuted in four locations on Wednesday, earning $140,000 over three days and $215,000 over five. The Revenant also continued its successful four-theater run, earning an estimated $474,560 in its second weekend.

Why the Feds Have Not Ended the Oregon Militia Standoff

It’s been two days since a group of armed militiamen seized a federal building in Oregon, broadcasting grievances with the government amid open preparations for the prospect of a violent clash. Locals schools have been closed for the week. The county courthouse is shuttered. Yet so far there has been little visible law enforcement response. And while that may frustrate or confuse many Americans, it’s probably an indication that law enforcement is handling a delicate situation correctly.

In an armed confrontation with extremists, the first rule is to proceed carefully, according to former federal officials involved in some of the trickiest standoffs in recent memory. “You don’t want to do anything precipitous that would heighten the degree of confrontation,” says Tom Kubic, the former FBI special agent in charge of the bureau’s 1996 standoff with the Montana Freemen, an antigovernment fringe group holed up on a compound from which they’d been legally evicted. “The key is to be very cautious, go slow, and take a look at and understand what is being asked for.”

A light touch suits the Oregon incident for several reasons. One is the lack of an imminent threat. The militia members are occupying an empty building on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a marshy oasis in the high desert of remote southeast Oregon, a half-day’s drive from the nearest mid-size city. There are no hostages or civilians currently at risk. No blood has been spilled. The militia group, which on Monday christened itself the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, does not even have a clear set of demands.

Which isn’t to say they might not be dangerous. The occupiers had been part of a demonstration Saturday in nearby Burns, Ore., to protest the sentences of two local ranchers convicted of arson. A hard-core faction split off and broke into the snowy wildlife refuge to dig in against government “tyranny.” Among their leaders are sons of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada cattle rancher whose refusal to pay more than $1 million in fees and fines for grazing rights on government land triggered a massive 2014 standoff with government authorities and made the family a cause celebre among militiamen and adherents of the so-called Patriot movement.

“The main reason we’re here is because we need a place to stand,” according to Ammon Bundy, a leader of the group. Bundy said the group posed no public threat but if government officials were combative, then “lives could be lost.”

Lives have been lost in the past. The federal government is still haunted by catastrophic standoffs like the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidians compound near Waco, Tex., which left scores dead, and the 1992 confrontation at Ruby Ridge in northern Idaho, which killed a federal marshal and two civilians. Those incidents became rallying cries for the radical right—and a source of inspiration to domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the perpetrators of the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168.

Law enforcement is loathe to let a wildlife reserve in a swath of the West where the coyote population outnumbers people to become a similar touchstone. “These men came to Harney County claiming to be part of militia groups supporting local ranchers,” said county sheriff Dave Ward, “when in reality these men had alternative motives, to attempt to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States.”

That’s why federal authorities are handling the situation with kid gloves for now. After Ruby Ridge and Waco, the Department of Justice conducted a review and issued new guidelines for defusing such confrontations. In 1994, the FBI created a Critical Incident Response Group, whose specialized personnel—including hostage negotiators and behavioral scientists—are on hand to assist field bureaus as they tackle crises.

One tactic is to employ third-party intermediaries to negotiate. In the Freemen standoff, which was peacefully resolved, the FBI used 42 third-party negotiators. Some of them were local elected officials. Other figures were less reputable, but better able to channel the sense of radical grievance that drove the standoff. At Ruby Ridge and again at the Freemen compound in Montana, the bureau deployed James “Bo” Gritz, a Vietnam vet well known on the fringe for his virulent racism, as an emissary. When you’re dealing with people who reject government authority, the government isn’t the best messenger.

“Sometimes you have to go that way in order to break the ice and get a dialogue going,” says Robin Montgomery, a former FBI special agent who ran the bureau’s command post at Ruby Ridge and is now the police chief in Brookfield, Conn. “You’ve got to figure out who’s in charge on the inside, and figure out who’s the best person on the outside to make that connection.”

Another reason for the feds to be cautious is to keep an isolated group from becoming martyrs. The militia group has claimed to number some 150, but could number a tenth that size. They are, in some ways, too radical for the far right. Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, an antigovernment group affiliated with the Patriot movement, told TIME the seizure of the refuge was “a horrendous mistake that makes us look like the aggressors.” While the Bundys are respected in these circles, “Ammon is surrounded by idiots and hotheads,” Rhodes says. Among his confederates are Blaine Cooper, who called for Sen. John McCain to be arrested for treason; Jon Ritzheimer, who is known for organizing anti-Muslim rallies and pushing to arrest federal elected officials, and an electrician from Montana whose cartoonish behavior led some on the right believe he’s a federal plant.

But restraint can also set a troubling precedent. After authorities backed off at the Bundy ranch to avoid bloodshed, federal officials promised Cliven Bundy would be held responsible for his crimes. “Cliven Bundy has had multiple court orders to remove his cattle from federal public lands and he has not paid his grazing fees and he has not abided by the law,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We will continue to pursue that.” Added Jewell: “The wheels of justice move at their own pace … I am confident this issue is going to be appropriately resolved.”

But Bundy still hasn’t paid up. His supporters believe they got the better of the Feds. Now they are trying their luck again. Prudence has brought its own set of problems. “It does embolden folks to see the government will not take aggressive action,” says Montgomery. “It is a conundrum, isn’t it?”

To some liberals, there is a racial dimension as well. In recent urban uprisings, authorities have been quick to deploy SWAT teams and tear gas canisters. At times during the Ferguson protests, unarmed civilians were arrested for standing still on public streets for longer than five seconds. “One could not imagine a group of armed black men taking over an unoccupied federal building in one of our nation’s cities as they have in Oregon,” said Rep. Donna Edwards, a Democrat running for a Maryland Senate seat.

The FBI has not said much about how it intends to handle the Oregon standoff. The bureau did not reply to an inquiry from TIME. A statement issued over the weekend said simply that it was “working with the Harney County Sheriff’s Office, Oregon State Police and other local and state law enforcement agencies to bring a peaceful resolution to the situation.”

Still, a laissez-faire approach strikes observers on both sides as smarter than the alternative. It takes time to talk down radicals: the Freemen standoff lasted 81 days. That, says Rhodes, should be a model for federal intervention. “They need to back off and let this drag off so that it ends in a peaceful way,” Rhodes says. “If they go in there and crush these guys instead of waiting them out, there will be a serious reaction across the country.”

Bahrain, UAE and Sudan rally to Saudi side in Iran row

Saudi Arabia's regional allies have stepped up diplomatic pressure on Iran, breaking or downgrading relations with the country following an attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran, which followed executions in the kingdom.

Bahrain announced on Monday that it was closing its embassy in Iran, and called upon Iranian diplomats to leave the country within 48 hours.

Bahrain frequently accuses Iran of being behind protests among its majority Shia population.

Within hours of the announcement, Sudan also said it was cutting off diplomatic relations with Iran "in solidarity with Saudi Arabia".

For its part, the UAE said it was downgrading its ties with Iran, replacing its ambassador with an embassy officer-in-charge.

Saudi Arabia announced on Sunday it was severing diplomatic relations with Iran and urged its allies to follow its move.

The decision came after Iranian protesters attacked its embassy in Tehran, following the kingdom's decision to execute Shia religious figure Nimr al-Nimr along with 46 other mostly Sunni convicts on terrorism charges.

Shia minorities across the Middle East have been demonstrating after Nimr's execution.

Saudi Arabia is adamant Nimr got a fair trial. Many of the men executed had been linked to attacks in Saudi Arabia between 2003 and 2006, blamed on al-Qaeda.

Saudi Arabia further announced on Monday that it was cutting commercial ties with Iran and cancelling all flights to and from Iran, according to Reuters.

In an interview with the news agency, Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi foreign minister, said the kindom was banning all its citizens from travelling to Iran.

However, Iranian pilgrims are still welcome to visit Saudi Arabia and Mecca, Islam's holiest site, he said.

Earlier, Abdul Latif bin Rashid al-Zayani, secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council, condemned the attack in Tehran and held Iranian authorities fully responsible for failing to protect the Saudi diplomatic mission.

Iranian perspective

It is not the first time diplomatic relations have been cut between Saudi Arabia and Iran. However, there are fears it could lead to more violence.

Iran's foreign ministry said Saudi Arabia was using the attack on its embassy in Tehran as a pretext to fuel tensions..

The statement came after Iran was given a 48-hour deadline to remove its diplomatic mission from Riyadh.

"Iran ... is committed to providing diplomatic security based on international conventions. But Saudi Arabia, which thrives on tensions, has used this incident as an excuse to fuel the tensions," Hossein Jaberi Ansari, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, said in televised remarks on Monday.

On the other hand, Jubeir has accused Iranian authorities of being complicit in the attack, saying that documents and computers were taken from the embassy building.

He said the Saudi diplomatic representative had sought help from the Iranian foreign ministry when the building was stormed, but the requests were ignored three times.

Hamid Soorghali, a UK-based Iran observer said, the attack of the Saudi embassy "only works to damage and affect the image of Iran".

He said while the leadership in Iran is unified in condemning the execution of Nimr, it is divided in terms of the reaction.

"We get different responses from different institutions and leaders in Iran. We get a harsher message from Iran's supreme leader, which very much reverberates  in the mood and scenes of protesters in front of the embassy," he told Al Jazeera.

'No love lost'

Ghanbar Naderi, a journalist with Kayhan, a publication closely linked to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, said the breaking of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran was inevitable.

"It was going to happen today or tomorrow. This is a natural outcome of what has been going on for the past four or five years in Syria, Iraq and Yemen," he told Al Jazeera.

"Make no mistake about it, there is no love lost between the Iranians and the Saudis."

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from New York, said diplomats at the UN have expressed worries over the escalating war of words.

"What we are seeing is the fallout across the Gulf countries," he said. "In terms of the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran, I think most people think that this is probably as bad as you can get."

On Sunday, Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, issued a statement saying he was "concerned" about both sides of the diplomatic dispute, while criticising both the executions and the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

Ban was to send Staffan de Mistura, the UN special representative for Syria, to Riyadh and Tehran on Monday, a UN official told Al Jazeera.

In a call on Monday, Ban conveyed his concerns to the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran, a UN statement said.

The statement said he urged the two countries "to avoid any actions that could further exacerbate the situation between two countries and in the region as a whole".

Observers say relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran are at their lowest point in recent memory [Al Jazeera]

Star Wars Monopoly Game Criticized For Leaving Out Rey

ChinaFotoPress/Getty ImagesActress Daisy Ridley attends "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" premiere at Shanghai Grand Theatre on Dec. 27, 2015 in Shanghai, China.

Star Wars: The Force Awakensmay revolve around the disappearance of Luke Skywalker, but some fans of the space fantasy are up in arms over the absence of another character — Daisy Ridley’s Rey.

Although the plucky young space scavenger is the undisputed protagonist of The Force Awakens, she’s conspicuously missing from some tie-in merchandise, including a new Star Wars-themed Monopoly game.

According to a description on the Hasbro website, the game features four player tokens, all of whom are male characters: John Boyega’s Finn, Mark Hamill’s Luke, Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren, and Darth Vader (who doesn’t appear in The Force Awakens).

In recent weeks, Star Wars fans have been vocal about an apparent lack of Rey tie-in toys, spawning hashtags such as #WheresRey and #WhereIsRey. (Last summer, Marvel fans — and even a prominent Marvel actor — similarly complained about Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow being shut out of Avengers merch.)

UPDATE: Reached for comment, a Hasbro spokesperson said in a statement to EW, “The Star Wars: Monopoly game was released in September, months before the movie’s release, and Rey was not included to avoid revealing a key plot line that she takes on Kylo Ren and joins the Rebel Alliance.”

The spokesperson added that Rey is featured in several Hasbro games, including Hands Down, Guess Who, and chess, and that “fans will see more Rey product hitting store shelves this month, including 6-inch and 12-inch Rey action figures. We are thrilled with the popularity of this compelling character and will continue to look for ways to showcase Rey across all of our product lines.”

Venezuelans losing hope as gridlock looms

Caracas, Venezuela - When Kilder Telleria, a 40-year-old graphic designer, voted for the opposition in last December's parliamentary elections, he was not feeling particularly hopeful.

For Telleria, the Venezuelan government has consistently found ways to "cheat" its way into amassing more powers. At best, he thought, the opposition would seal a close win.

"They control the supreme court, the electoral council and the military," Telleria said.

"They've even given away houses and taxis so people vote for them."

When the opposition won 112 out of the 167 seats - and secured a supermajority in Venezuela's once government-controlled assembly for the first time since 1999 - Telleria felt the country had taken a slow turn for the better.

"These elections mean we can bring about a change democratically and not through a coup or violence like it's happened in the past."

Venezuela has the highest proven oil reserves in the world. Yet, it has been suffering from chronic shortages of anything from milk to medical-diagnosis kits for over three years now.

Block-long queues outside shops of people standing under the tropical sun for hours has become a familiar sight.

According to the IMF, Venezuela's economy is expected to contract 10 percent next year.

Economists say the country faces a real chance of defaulting on its debt before the end of the year.

The drop in oil prices is expected to worsen conditions in Venezuela whose economy depends almost exclusively on oil revenues.

In addition, a lot of the country's infrastructure is crumbling with power outages often leaving half the country in darkness.

The government says the blackouts are the product of sabotage designed to destabilise Nicolas Maduro's presidency.

Dire economic state

December's polls suggested fewer people trust the government's explanations for the country's dire economic state.

Adding insult to injury, Venezuela has an abysmal crime rate. A local human rights group claims the murder rate is as high as 90 per 100,000 people, making it one of the most dangerous places in the world.

For Carolina Falcon, a public school teacher, it is no wonder that voter participation over 75 percent and that the opposition achieved such a sweeping victory.

She hoped this defeat, which she describes as a silent protest, would give the government a clear message.

"All you hear while you stand there in an endless queue is how angry people are at the government," Falcon said.

However, her hopes have since been dashed.

"The illusion lasted less than a week," she said, referring to the series of measures the government has taken since December's elections and before the inauguration of the new assembly on Tuesday.

Despite signing a document in which it pledged to recognise the results - it recognised the results on election night - the government seems set on neutralising the opposition's supermajority.

A week after the elections, president of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, fast-tracked the approval of 13 Supreme Court judges who can effectively challenge any legislation passed by the parliament.

Choice of top judges

In addition to this, members of the ruling party have challenged the election of eight legislators.

Four of these charges, three opposition and one pro-government, have been approved by the government-friendly Supreme Court.

The move is seen as a clear indication that the government is seeking to block the opposition’s two-thirds majority, and has reawakened fears that the country will enter a gridlock scenario, with none of the much-needed economic measures being passed.

"The government continues to ignore what people, including its supporters, have been screaming for months. Things have to change," Falcon said.

The opposition has called the decision a "judicial coup".

It has pledged to attend the National Assembly's inauguration on Tuesday with the 112 elected legislators that grant the loosely based coalition the super-majority they could use to name new ministers, draft a new constitution and even set in motion a recall referendum on Maduro's presidency.

Chavismo, as the hybrid system that combines democratic elections with increasingly autocratic features is known, has derived much of its legitimacy on winning 18 of the 20 elections held in the 16 years since its been in power.

For political scientists here, failing to recognise the opposition's supermajority or trying to block legislation the new parliament tries to pass will only drive the nation deeper into political paralysis.

It foils efforts to take painful but necessary economic measures, and portends another flare-up of violent streets protests which left 43 people dead in February 2014.

"Chavistas have said their government was for the people but it seems they only meant it when the people did what they wanted them to," Telleria said from his working-class neighbourhood.

"Let's just hope the opposition is different."

The Quiet Crisis in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The latest uproar between Saudi Arabia and Iran has spread far and fast since the Saudis executed 47 people by beheading on the day after New Year’s Day.

Within hours, hardliners from Iran overran the Saudi Embassy in Tehran because the victims included prominent Shi’ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Diplomatic relations were quickly severed in both capitals, and downgraded in another Saudi ally, the United Arab Emirates. The fallout has further dimmed the already dismal prospects for peace in Syria, where the Saudis and Iranians support different sides in that country’s civil war, and of course sparked a rise in oil prices (though not as much as you might expect).

It was a full-on Mideast Crisis, with events cascading at a rate that challenged even those who follow the Middle East closely. But the search for meaning leads back to where it all began: the Saudi kingdom, which is facing pressures both inside and out. “There’s been 70 years of idle and completely erroneous speculation that the Saudis were unstable,” says Charles Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. “This is the first time that they might be.”

Overseas, arch rival Iran threatens both the Saudis’ traditional dominance of the region and its alliance with the United States. Washington’s engagement with Tehran on a nuclear program has enhanced Iran’s international stature while depriving the Saudis of their privileged place beside the Americans. Wars in neighboring Iraq and Yemen — where the kingdom has involved itself in a bloody and indiscriminate air campaign against rebels backed by Iran — only add to the feeling of isolation. “There’s vulnerability, I think, the feeling of being vulnerable and surrounded by hostile forces,” says Madawi Al-Rasheed, a Saudi expert and visiting scholar at the London School of Economics.

Things at home aren’t much better. Gaping budget shortfalls caused by low oil prices are forcing rulers to cut subsidies and raise fuel prices, moves sure to foment discontent among the population of 29 million. “They’re not sure I think of the acquiescence of the domestic audience,” Al-Rasheed says. “They have kept them under control since the Arab uprising, but it’s a question.”

Freeman, who served during the First Gulf War, says the challenges to Saudi stability have been amplified by the actions of King Salman, who took over as monarch a year ago and upended the kingdom’s traditional governing structure. He placed a cousin, Mohammad bin Nayef, as Crown Prince, and made his own very young, untested son, Mohammad bin Salman, his chief of staff, Deputy Crown Prince and Minister of Defense.

So where once the House of Saud maintained stability by encompassing all manner of lineages “from left wing to the regressive religious right wing,” Freeman says, the kingdom has now consolidated power in a single line of the family. “The decision-making has not only been narrowed to one lineage, but even closer to the descendants of one man, Salman. That means the possibility of rash decisions went up, and you could argue that the war in Yemen is an example of that. You could argue that the executions are an example of that.”

The Jan. 2 mass execution was the largest since January 1980, when 63 people were beheaded for taking over the Grand Mosque in Mecca, in a siege intended to topple the House of Saud on grounds that the ruling family had strayed from the strictest tenants of fundamentalist Islam. The threat prompted the royal family to empower conservative religious authorities in the Kingdom, to avoid being flanked by the retrograde fundamentalism critics say the Saudis have exported worldwide in the decades since. In October, 55 prominent fundamentalist Saudi clerics signed a letter of complaint after Russian jets targeted ISIS, the Sunni militant group which has wide support in some elements of Saudi society.

Some analysts say the beheading of al-Nimr alongside three other Shi’ite activists amounted to a sop to fundamentalist Sunni sentiment in the kingdom. The other 43 victims, after all, were all Sunni fundamentalists associated with al-Qaeda, imprisoned for more than a decade for attempting to overthrow the rule of the royal family. Killing Shi’ite activists would presumably offer a measure of sectarian balance.

But neither Freeman nor Al-Rasheed buy that rationale. Both saw the executions as of a piece with efforts to deter Saudi Arabia’s restive Shi’ite population from organizing against a governing structure that treats them as second-class citizens. “It goes beyond religion,” says Al-Rasheed. “I wouldn’t call it conservative, I would call it repressive. It is autocratic, it prohibits people from talking, from free speech. More people are being lashed. For tweets. For blogs. There are people who are languishing in prison because of writing a poem. So that is an augmented repression which reflects in my view a vulnerability.”

At the same time, she adds, the mass execution serves to distract attention from Yemen, where King Salman’s air war has produced thousands of civilian deaths over 10 months but no visible gain for the ousted Yemeni president Saudi Arabia claims to champion. “In 50s the Saudis removed a king for incompetence, King Saud, that was the effect of the ‘council of brothers,’ as it was called,” says Freeman. “Now there’s no such check … there’s no way to address that institutionally.”

Letters have been leaked to the media, purportedly from a member of the royal family, claiming the king was senile and being manipulated by his son and chief of staff Mohammed bin Salman. It called on the kingdom’s elders to unite and overthrow King Salman’s regime. “That has not happened,” says Freeman, “because the institutional basis for that examination has largely been destroyed.”

The result is more of that thing the Middle East produces even more reliably than petroleum — uncertainty — but this time in the belly of the beast.