Saudi men earlier had the option of requesting alert messages about their dependants' cross-border movement, but it appears that since last week such notifications are being sent automatically.

BBC: Saudi women in Riyadh. File photo

This in turn might lead the Sudanese government to renew its support for the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a bizarre cross between a religious cult and a rebel movement based across the border in northern Uganda, which abducts children and makes them attack Ugandan government forces and civilians.

ECONOMIST: Threats and excuses | The

There was one father who started all this a couple weeks ago, came out here and has been airing TV ads saying he disagrees with Cindy Sheehan, and he started the movement and took his son's name off the cross, and just today I'd say at least 10 and possibly more just in the last couple of hours.

NPR: Crowd Gathers in Crawford to Support Bush

Around the time of the Abbasid dynasty, cross-border trade became extremely active in the Islamic world with merchants acting as mediators for the movement of goods among western and African countries, India, and (later) China.

ECONOMIST: The once and future boom