Saudi Arabia's King Salman telephoned the US president Friday to denounce as "heinous" a fatal shooting at an American naval base allegedly carried out by a Saudi air force trainee, state media said. In the call with President Donald Trump, the king expressed "deep sorrow" over the Florida shooting and pledged cooperation with American officials, the official Saudi Press Agency said.

Saudi Arabia, the dominant force in Opec, is using both carrot and stick to talk other members of the oil cartel into defending prices at Thursday's ministerial meeting. Saudi-Oil-Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, in Vienna for his first-meeting since taking the top job, is willing to raise production slightly if other countries keep failing to meet their existing output target, according to Opec delegates.

The institutional tranche of Saudi Aramco's planned initial public offering (IPO) has been almost three times oversubscribed, receiving orders worth 189.04-billion riyals ($50.4-billion), financial advisers for the IPO said on Tuesday. The bookbuilding process for allocating shares to institutional buyers typically asset managers, insurers or pension funds began on Nov. 17 and investors have until 1700 Saudi time on Dec. 4 to place orders.