Middle East

On 22 July 2026, the US administration announced a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. Under this deal, the US will provide support to the Golf country to establish a civilian nuclear programme. This is worrisome given statements by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, that once Iran has nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia would follow suit. Given the nuclear-induced tensions in the Middle East between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the scope of the agreement, this newly formed cooperation may put another nail in the

Strong corporate results buoy market as investors move money away from tech and semiconductor stocks London’s FTSE 100 stock index has touched a fresh high, driven by strong corporate results as investors moved money away from tech and semiconductor stocks amid the global tech stock sell-off . The UK’s blue chip index rose as high as 10,951 points on Wednesday morning before falling back slightly, its best level since 27 February, the day before the US and Israel began attacks on Iran and sparke

On June 22, the United States announced that it had signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia. This type of agreement broadly authorizes trade in nuclear technology, equipment, and materials, but only if the agreement and the country in question meet defined nonproliferation requirements. They are called Section 123 agreements for the section of the 1957 U.S. Atomic Energy Act that lays out the specific conditions for them. But the legal terms of Section 123 are only the minimum r

Task Force Talon Synapse is slated to soon be fully operational, but some observers question its ultimate value. The post U.S. military forms first bilateral AI task force with United Arab Emirates appeared first on DefenseScoop .

“It sounds good on paper,” a former senior defense official told Breaking Defense. “My biggest questions revolve around classified information sharing.”

“We're bombing a country to keep them from getting a nuclear weapon, but we're signing a deal with another country,” said the Republican Senator.

Yet another Israeli mass surveillance company : Made by Israeli surveillance company Cognyte, the tech simulates a mobile phone tower, which forces nearby phones to connect to it. That enables cops to keep tabs on any phones in the vicinity ­ whether they’re owned by a suspect in a case or not. Cognyte’s contract with the state of Texas reveals that the simulator, called FalcoNet, can be concealed within the vehicles, hidden in a backpack for on-foot missions or attached to a helicopter. It’s th

"In any case, what is clear is that Iran’s war is becoming increasingly intertwined with two other conflicts: the Saudi-Houthi confrontation and the Russia-Ukraine war."

The status change should “shorten procurement timelines, make sustainment less cumbersome and facilitate closer cooperation between American defense companies and UAE institutions,” one analyst told Breaking Defense.

Reader’s react to the New York mayor’s video criticizing the Israeli prime minister. Also: A.I. jobs for philosophers; a battle in the health care industry; fast walkers; pregnant bellies.

The company, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2017, stands to benefit from growing support for nuclear power and President Trump’s deal with Saudi Arabia.

Monday.com is cutting roughly 20 percent of its global workforce, about 620 people, as the Israeli project management company restructures around what it calls its AI Work Platform. The company disclosed the plan in a Form 6-K filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, citing the need to support a leaner operating […] This story continues at The Next Web

Romance scammers have become extremely bold, using deepfake technology to impersonate royalty and ensnare new victims. Key takeaways Scammer used AI-generated video calls to impersonate Dubai's Crown Prince and build trust with victims. ... (https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1570#7545)

arXiv:2607.17356v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Allegations that TikTok shadow bans political content shape what creators post, what advertisers fund, and how regulators act, yet they are hard to adjudicate because platforms do not disclose how content is ranked. We test the claim with a dense hourly panel of 556,946 follower-normalized views across 2,753 videos from 67 accounts curated into pro and anti sides of three contested topics (U.S. immigration enforcement, Trump coverage, and Israel/

Flight logs show the FIFA President utilized a private jet gifted by World Cup sponsor Qatar Airways to travel to 21 different airports throughout the tournament.

In brief On 2 February 2026, Saudi Arabia issued Royal Decree No. M/169 approving a new Copyright Law, by virtue of Cabinet Decision No. 560/1447 dated 27 January 2026. The Law was published in the Official Gazette on 13 February 2026 and will enter into force on 12 August 2026, replacing the 2003 Copyright Law [...] The post Saudi Arabia: New Copyright Law Modernises KSA IP Framework appeared first on Connect On Tech .

Israel’s military destroyed a residential building in Deir Al-Balah, central of Gaza Strip after ordering people to flee their houses, residents said.

Asian share markets slipped on Monday as the escalating conflict in the Gulf lifted oil prices and ​fanned fears of inflation, while a packed week of major tech earnings will further test investor ...

You’ve come a long way, Bibi: Israel’s crucial election    The Economist

Symmetry Investments has received the regulatory approval to operate in Dubai, joining hedge fund peers who’re continuing to expand in the emirate despite the regional conflict.

The potential deal comes few days after Saudi Arabia and Iran-backed Yemeni Houthi traded fire, ending a four-year truce.

arXiv:2607.13443v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Sovereign AI has become a strategic priority across the Global South, with over \$200 billion in state-led commitments announced between 2024 and 2026. Yet the physical infrastructure that compute sovereignty demands, above all data centers, imposes water, energy, and carbon costs that fall hardest on countries least equipped to absorb them. This paper presents a comparative environmental stress analysis across four cases: the United Arab Emirates,

In brief On 17 June 2026, the UAE Cabinet issued Resolution No. 106 of 2026, the first detailed instrument under the Child Digital Safety Law (Federal Decree-Law No. 26 of 2025). It introduces a hard age limit for social media, backed by mandatory age verification, and applies to any social media platform operating in or directed [...] The post United Arab Emirates: Legislation Issued Banning Under-15s from Social Media appeared first on Connect On Tech .

The October election in Israel will be the voters’ verdict on Benjamin Netanyahu.

Publication date: August 2026 Source: Telecommunications Policy, Volume 50, Issue 7 Author(s): Erez Eliyahu, Zvika Neeman

As Gulf states compete through scale and headline-grabbing mega-projects, Bahrain EDB’s CEO H.E. Noor is pursuing a different path—leveraging regulatory innovation, specialist sectors, and strategic partnerships to position the kingdom as the region's agile investment hub.

arXiv:2607.11127v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Organizations and regulators increasingly consult large language models (LLMs) for regulatory-compliance questions, yet a wrong statutory citation can silently propagate into legal advice, compliance documentation, and policy decisions. We introduce a bilingual benchmark of 120 questions probing whether freely accessible LLMs fabricate article citations for two data-protection instruments: the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the

In this final rule, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) amends the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to provide enhanced favorable treatment for the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Specifically, BIS is removing the UAE from Country Groups D:3 and D:4 and adding the UAE to Country Group A:5. More license exceptions will now be available, including Strategic Trade Authorization (STA) for the UAE Government and approved commercial entities in the UAE. STA will authorize the export, reexport

On Feb. 28, 2026, President Donald Trump announced the commencement of Operation Epic Fury, a joint U.S.-Israeli military operation against Iran. Among the mission’s goals was the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. “When we are finished,” Trump told the Iranian people, “take over your government. It will be yours to take.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed Trump’s message, saying: “Our joint action will create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to take their destiny into

The Commerce Department will favorably review exports involving MGX, which used a stablecoin linked to President Trump's family for a $2B Binance investment.

L’opérateur émirati Emirates Telecommunications Corporation, plus connu sous sa marque commerciale Etisalat, ou son logo e&, a annoncé (PDF) vendredi la vente de sa participation dans le groupe Vodafone à une société dédiée intégralement détenue par la famille Niel. Baptisé Vega, ce véhicule d’investissement se prépare ainsi à acheter l’équivalent de 16,21 % du capital […]

The punk-rap duo Bob Vylan has filed defamation proceedings against the BBC in the High Court in Ireland, following its coverage of their 2025 Glastonbury performance, which the broadcaster described as containing “anti-Semitic sentiments.” The case stems from controversy over chants the band led calling for “death to the IDF [Israel Defence Force],” which the […]

WASHINGTON - Maria believed she was romancing a prince from Dubai, captivated by his flirtatious smile and declarations of affection he showered on her during live video calls. But the suitor was an AI deepfake, making her yet another victi ... (https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1570#7490)

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said today it worked with industry partners to seize hundreds of domains associated with NetNut, a sprawling residential proxy service operated by the publicly-traded Israeli company Alarum Technologies [NASDAQ: ALAR]. The action comes roughly two weeks after KrebsOnSecurity published findings from multiple security firms connecting NetNut to the Popa botnet, a collection of at least two million devices that have been compromised by malicious software wi

Drawn by affordable international schooling rather than glitz, Chinese students in the UAE are quietly rethinking how they see education, work, and future opportunities.

The Kurds’ fortunes have ebbed and flowed in recent years, but the fall of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024, the 2025 decision by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to dissolve and engage in talks with the Turkish government, and the 2026 U.S.-Israeli war with Iran had enormous ripple effects on the lives of Kurds in the Middle East and Kurdish hopes for autonomy. We asked four experts to assess how recent regional events are presenting risks and opportunities for the Kurds in Turkey,

This article is the result of a collaboration with The Sunday Times. You can find their corresponding piece here. Every Friday evening, the brochure says, players can compete to win cash prizes in one of the world’s fastest-growing racquet sports. The padel club in Dubai’s west is the picture of modern wellness culture: climate-controlled courts, […] The post Poster Boy: Sanctioned Kinahan Cartel Lieutenant Found Playing Padel in Dubai appeared first on bellingcat .

Existing 3D sign language avatar reconstruction methods are developed and evaluated exclusively on Western sign languages, and no 3D parametric annotations exist for any Arabic Sign Language dataset, a gap that blocks the development of avatar-based accessibility applications for the Arab Deaf community. We release the first SMPL-X parametric annotations for the Ishara-500 Saudi Sign Language dataset, enabling quantitative evaluation and downstream sign language generation for Arabic Sign Langua

Dense vector retrieval is the practical backbone of Retrieval- Augmented Generation (RAG), but similarity search can suffer from precision limitations. Conversely, utility-based approaches leveraging LLM re-ranking often achieve superior performance but are computationally prohibitive and prone to noise inherent in perplexity estimation. We propose Utility-Aligned Embeddings (UAE), a framework designed to merge these advantages into a practical, high-performance retrieval method. We formulate re

We present Fanar 2.0, the second generation of Qatar's Arabic-centric Generative AI platform. Sovereignty is a first-class design principle: every component, from data pipelines to deployment infrastructure, was designed and operated entirely at QCRI, Hamad Bin Khalifa University. Fanar 2.0 is a story of resource-constrained excellence: the effort ran on 256 NVIDIA H100 GPUs, with Arabic having only ~0.5% of web data despite 400 million native speakers. Fanar 2.0 adopts a disciplined strategy of