WHEN THE POPE LEADS THE REFORMATION:

Saudi Arabia appoints first female minister (Julian Borger, 2/16/09, The Guardian)

In his first reshuffle since assuming the throne in 2005, King Abdullah also replaced two powerful enemies of reform, the chief of the Saudi religious police, Sheikh Ibrahim al-Ghaith, and the country's most senior judge, Sheikh Salih Ibn al-Luhaydan. Ghaith, who runs the commission for the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice, known as the mutawa, which enforces bans on alcohol and drugs, has gained a reputation for brutality. Luhaydan ruled last year that it was permissible to kill owners of satellite television channels broadcasting "immoral" programmes. Several other hardline judges were sacked as part of a challenge against the kingdom's hardline religious establishment.

The grand Ulema commission, an influential grouping of religious scholars, will be reconfigured and opened to moderate clerics, breaking the grip of the ultra-conservatives.

King Abdullah also appointed a new head of a 150-seat consultative body, the Shura council, and replaced his ministers of education, health, justice and information.