The Saudi foreign ministry issued on Monday a travel restriction advisory to Lebanon, the official SPA news agency said.

“Due to the unstable security situation in Lebanon, the foreign ministry warns its citizens against traveling to Lebanon to maintain their safety, until further notice,” an unidentified high-ranking official in the ministry told the news agency.

A Saudi diplomat abducted by al-Qaida in Yemen's south has made a new appeal to King Abdullah to secure his release by meeting the demands of his captors, according to a video posted on jihadist forums.

"Why are you refusing to free the prisoners?" Abdullah al-Khalidi asked the Saudi monarch in the video posted Sunday and published hours later by SITE Intelligence Group.

Saudi Arabia's oil giant Aramco on Wednesday announced plans to merge its company Vela with Saudi firm Bahri to form the world's fourth largest oil transporter.

Under a non-binding memorandum of understanding, Bahri would pay Vela $1.3 billion, made up of $832,000 in cash and the rest in stocks.

A Saudi national was convicted Wednesday of plotting attacks on the Texas home of former U.S. president George W. Bush, nuclear plants, hydroelectric dams and other targets, prosecutors said.

Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, 22, was arrested last year after a chemical supplier became suspicious when he tried to order concentrated phenol, a toxic chemical that has legitimate uses but is also a powerful bomb-making tool.

A Saudi passenger train heading from the kingdom's eastern city of Dammam to the capital Riyadh derailed on Wednesday, causing injuries but no deaths, a senior transportation official said.

Hamad Abdel Qader, deputy chief of operations at the Saudi Railways Organization, told Agence France Presse that the train derailed "100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Riyadh."

Saudi Arabia on Wednesday beheaded one of its citizens after he was found guilty of kidnapping and raping a boy, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by the state news agency SPA.

Mohammed bin Ahmed al-Jubeiri, who kidnapped, beat and then raped a little boy, was executed Wednesday in the kingdom's holy city of Mecca, the ministry said.

Saudi authorities on Tuesday beheaded four of its citizens for murder and a Syrian national for drug smuggling, the interior ministry said.

Three Saudi nationals were executed in the kingdom's eastern Qatif region for stabbing and then shooting to death an Indian, Kohimo Ahmad, after robbing the shop where he worked, the ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.

Saudi authorities beheaded on Monday one of its citizens after he was convicted of shooting dead two fellow Saudis, the interior ministry announced in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.

Musfer bin Atallah al-Jaeed shot dead Ahmed bin Mayud al-Sawat and Fares bin Masud al-Sawat after a dispute, the ministry said.

Saudi Arabia is set to pay the salaries of the rebel Free Syrian Army to encourage mass defections from President Bashar Assad's forces, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Saturday.

The payments would be made in either U.S. dollars or euros -- which would mean a rise in salaries as the Syrian pound has fallen sharply in value since the revolt started 16 months ago, the broadsheet said.

Saudi female activists have cancelled their plan to brave a driving ban on Friday, settling instead for petitioning King Abdullah to allow them to get behind the wheel, members of their group said.

"I think that last year's attempt by ladies to drive in public has sent the message ... Now it's time to address officials to urge them to issue driving licenses to women," said researcher Hala al-Dosari.