welcome to a new week and a new edition
of CNN ten I'm Carl azuz happy to see
you this Monday when International stock
markets open on September 16th one thing
investors around the world are watching
is the price of oil it's crucial for
world economies because it's their major
source of energy and a country that's a
major supplier of oil saw its oil
facilities attacked on Saturday as many
as 10 drones unmanned aircraft hit oil
plants in Saudi Arabia the kingdom is
the world's largest exporter of oil and
the attacks hit the world's largest oil
processing facility Saudi Arabia says no
one was hurt but half of its oil
production was disrupted and that
accounts for 5% of the world's daily oil
supply so as Saudi Arabia rushes to
repair the damaged plants investors want
to see if and how this affects oil
prices worldwide
they've been relatively low for months
but could go up significantly because of
this so who did it Houthi rebels in
neighboring Yemen say they did they've
been fighting for control of Yemen in
that nations Civil War but Saudi Arabia
which supports Yemen's government has
been leading an international fight
against the Houthi rebels so the Houthis
say they attacked Saudi Arabia's oil
facilities in response but not
everyone's convinced the US government
blames Iran for planning the attack
calling it an assault on the world's
energy supply Iran does support Yemen's
Houthi rebels but the country says it
wasn't involved in the Saudi oil attack
and called the u.s. accusation
meaningless tensions have been soaring
between America and Iran since last year
when the u.s. pulled out of a
controversial nuclear deal with the
Middle Eastern nation so as investors
watch oil prices Saudi Arabia works to
repair its facilities and the u.s. and
Iran bristle at each other international
politics are among the cast of tensions
on the world stage the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia and the United States are two
unexpected allies ones an autocracy the
other a democracy there are many
differences between the two but one
thing they have in common is that each
country has with the other ones Saudi
Arabia has oil and the United States
has arms to understand how reciprocal
the relationship is we need to go back
to how it started
Saudi Arabia as we know it was founded
in 1932 by King Abdulaziz a few years
later oil was struck and American
companies sensing an opportunity moved
in it was a relationship which was based
on a company Standard Oil in the name of
the US government trying to look for
access to oil resources
this picture shows where the
relationship crystallized this was Saudi
Arabia's founder King Abdul Aziz meeting
US President Franklin Roosevelt on the
USS Quincy on the Suez Canal in 1945 the
United States wanted to have a secure
access to to the oil resources and at
the same time they would provide the
Saudi Kingdom with access to arms and
obviously provide protection as the
years passed the relationship
strengthened Standard Oil founded Aramco
the Arabian American oil company which
controlled every oil well and barrel in
the country and as the oil flowed into
the u.s. american-made arms flowed into
the kingdom between 1950 and 2017 Saudi
Arabia bought more than 100 billion
dollars worth of arms from the US making
the kingdom the country's biggest
customer it's a relationship so strong
that even when Saudi Arabia and the US
are on opposite sides of an issue arms
continue to flow for example in 1973 and
the start of the Yom Kippur War Egypt
and Syria launched a surprise offensive
against Israel the u.s. responded
supporting Israel which Saudi opposed
the kingdom and its OPEC allies
responded by setting an oil embargo
reducing production and significantly
impacting the US economy but there was
no slowdown in arms sales if we look at
the actual figures of arms supplies to
Saudi Arabia from the US we do see that
that was around the time but we really
see a very significant increase in those
supplies which then continued over the
decades and probably this may also be
related to the fact but that really was
the moment that
prices really increased very rapidly
even 911 where fifteen out of the
nineteen attackers were Saudi did little
to rattle the arms relationship with the
kingdom which has denied any involvement
in the attacks ran 2005 there was a dip
in the volume of deliveries of weapons
from the u.s. to Saudi Arabia but I
think that didn't necessarily have to do
with 9/11 I think it had more to do with
the fact that Saudi Arabia I didn't have
the best financial conditions at that
time and that it had already stocked up
on a very large quantity of advanced
arms and in 2017 u.s. President Donald
Trump's first foreign visit was to Saudi
Arabia where he signed an arms deal said
to be worth 110 billion dollars for a
long time Saudi Arabia hasn't really
uses equipment very much a Batman
started to change
in 2015 we see the that said a
full-scale military intervention by the
Yemen conflict has become the world's
worst humanitarian crisis with tens of
thousands killed it's also widely seen
as a proxy war between Iran and Saudi
Arabia with Houthi rebels supported by
Iran and pro-government forces supported
by the saudi-led coalition the world has
changed a lot since the relationship
between Saudi Arabia and the USA began
imports of oil from the kingdom to the
US have dropped by 47% since a high in
1991 since that first Accord in 1932
Saudi Arabia has had seven kings the
u.s. has had fourteen presidents but
through it all the bond between these
two nations has remained unbreakable
ten-second trivia though Hong Kong isn't
independent from China it is considered
a what semi-autonomous Republic
special administrative region autonomous
region or Protectorate Hong Kong is a
special administrative region it's
people have more freedoms than those in
mainland China
Hong Kong's government says it's open to
increasing communication with the public
to solve the city's problems for the
fifteenth weekend in a row there were no
signs those problems are going away
there was a large peaceful march on
Sunday
there were also incidents of vandalism
and attacks on police demonstrators want
more democratic freedom for Hong Kong
but if struggles continue between them
and their local government it's possible
China could step in it says it has
ultimate control over the special
administrative region this is the 15th
straight weekend of confrontations and
protests here in Hong Kong and this is a
very typical site here
large numbers of riot police deployed
after demonstrators conducted a protest
march which had not been authorized by
the police through the downtown of Hong
Kong Islands and then it was followed up
with scenes of demonstrators coursing
through the streets teargas water
cannons it's a scene that has repeated
itself
week after week we witnessed on this
evening
a group of demonstrators beating a man
quite badly on a street corner we're not
sure why he was targeted but he left
dazed and bloodied now the fact is is
that hundreds of people have been
detained thus far arrested and this has
taken a toll on the Hong Kong economy
hotels have large numbers of vacancies
airplane ticket sales are down retail
sales are down as well and Hong Kong's
reputation has taken a beating the Hong
Kong government has taken some steps to
try to meet some protester demands but
at this stage there seems to be no
settlement insight and as you can hear
many ordinary citizens now view to the
police as targets of derision police
commanders have told CNN it will take
years to recover from the damage that
their reputation has suffered through
this cycle of confrontation Ivan Watson
CNN Hong Kong at Indiana's Purdue
University there's a new delivery team
on campus they don't talk much but they
do bring students something to chew on
customers can order food and drinks
using a smartphone app the meals are
plopped into the robots which then zip
around and drop them off within minutes
their automated though the people who
monitor them can take control if needed
and the company that provides the
service hopes to expand it in the years
ahead the question is will the meals on
wheels be slow in the snow will they
beat the heat with the food you eat or
will they arrive at all if the leaves
and fall Meyer the tires and cause
impairments that need repair Matt's
guess the robots will have to learn the
purr do's and don'ts of drone livery I'm
Carl azuz delivering another edition of
CNN
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