Dubai, UAE -- The region's top hospitality professionals will converge at the Conrad Dubai Hotel on November 25-26, 2025, for the eighth annual Commercial Strategy Conference (CSC) MEA. Organized by the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI) Middle East and Africa, the event has been the premier gathering for...

Dubai, UAE -- Dubai’s real estate market recorded 4,049 new activities in the first half of this year, reflecting the emirate’s growing appeal as a leading investment destination. This growth has been enabled by an advanced regulatory framework that promotes the smooth conduct of real estate activities and strengthens market...

Obeid, 41, was killed on Wednesday when Israeli forces "targeted people waiting for humanitarian aid in the southern Gaza Strip", the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) said in a statement.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- The Saudi Falcons Club has dedicated an interactive pavilion titled "Falconer of the Future" as part of the International Falcon Breeders Auction 2025, taking place at the club's headquarters in Malham, north of Riyadh, until August 25. This pavilion aims to introduce the younger generation to...

Geneva, Switzerland - Talks on forging a groundbreaking treaty to combat the scourge of plastic pollution were floundering Saturday, with progress slow and countries wildly at odds on what the proposed agreement should cover. The negotiations, which opened on Tuesday, have four working days left to strike a legally-binding instrument...

London, United Kingdom - US President Donald Trump's media group and Tesla, the electric carmaker owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk, are among an increasing number of companies buying huge amounts of bitcoin. The aim? To diversify reserves, counter inflation and attract investors, analysts say. Who also invests? Companies frequently...

San Francisco, United States -- OpenAI released a keenly awaited new generation of its hallmark ChatGPT on Thursday, touting "significant" advancements in artificial intelligence capabilities as a global race over the technology accelerates. ChatGPT-5 is rolling out free to all users of the AI tool, which is used by nearly 700...

Tokyo, Japan -- Airline ANA said Thursday that, together with a US start-up, it hopes to have electric "air taxis" whizzing over Japan from as early as 2027. ANA and California-based Joby Aviation said they will establish a joint venture with a view to deploying more than 100 of the...

Tangiers, Morocco - Animal welfare groups have accused Morocco of culling stray dogs as it prepares to host football's 2030 World Cup, but the kingdom denies the accusations, vowing to protect the canines. Advocates have charged that Morocco was indiscriminately ridding its streets of strays ahead of the global sporting...

Washington, United States -- Apple will invest an additional $100 billion in the United States, taking its total pledge to $600 billion over the next four years, a senior White House official said Wednesday. The announcement, which was first reported by US media, will be officially made later Wednesday at...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- Neo Space Group (NSG), a Public Investment Fund (PIF) company, has announced the launch of the Earth Observation (EO) Marketplace, the Kingdom’s first dedicated EO data marketplace, powered by UP42 – a company fully owned by NSG. The platform is designed to meet the growing demand...

San Francisco, United States -- Meta on Tuesday said it shut nearly seven million WhatsApp accounts linked to scammers in the first half of this year and is ramping up safeguards against such schemes. "Our team identified the accounts and disabled them before the criminal organizations that created them could...

Geneva, Switzerland -- Nations must resolve the global plastics crisis, the head of UN talks told negotiators from 180 countries gathered in Geneva on Tuesday to forge a landmark treaty on eliminating the life-threatening waste. "We are facing a global crisis," Ecuadoran diplomat Luis Vayas Valdivieso said at the start...

Washington, United States -- Tesla announced an "interim" compensation award worth about $29 billion for Elon Musk on Monday, asserting the need to retain the controversial CEO at a moment of fierce competition for top talent. The electric vehicle maker said in a statement it will award a distribution of...

New York, United States - Generative artificial intelligence assistants like ChatGPT are cutting into traditional online search traffic, depriving news sites of visitors and impacting the advertising revenue they desperately need, in a crushing blow to an industry already fighting for survival. "The next three or four years will be...

Dubai, UAE -- The first half of 2025 saw the completion of 24 real estate projects valued at AED 4.5 billion ($1.22 billion), according to data from the Dubai Land Department (DLD). This momentum is part of a wider growth trajectory, with 726 projects currently under construction across the emirate,...

Moscow, Russia -- A volcano erupted for the first time in 450 years in Russia's eastern Kamchatka region, the nation's emergency authority said Sunday, days after one of the strongest earthquakes on record hit the region. Pictures released by Russian state media show a towering plume of ash spewing from...

Istanbul, Turkey - Turkey on Saturday turned on a supply of natural gas from Azerbaijan to Syria, whose infrastructure was ravaged by civil war, with annual deliveries expected to reach up to two billion cubic metres. Syria's Islamist authorities, who toppled Bashar al-Assad in December, are seeking to rebuild the...

Stockholm, Sweden - A Stockholm court on Thursday handed down a life term to Swedish jihadist Osama Krayem over the 2015 murder of a Jordanian pilot burned alive by the Islamic State group in Syria. The Swedish court was the first to try a person over the killing that sparked...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- Saudi Arabia's real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 3.9 percent in the second quarter of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024. According to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), flash estimates of GDP for Q2 2025, released today by the General Authority for Statistics...

Jerusalem, Undefined -- The United Arab Emirates has begun construction on a major pipeline to carry desalinated water from Egypt to southern Gaza, according to multiple sources. Technical teams sent by the UAE have started transporting equipment needed for the project, the Emirati state news agency WAM reported on Wednesday....

Washington, United States - Unconditional support for Israel has long been an entry requirement in US Republican politics, but that orthodoxy is being challenged by Donald Trump's populist base -- where invocations of the "special relationship" are falling on deaf ears. Images of starvation and suffering in Gaza have given...

Dubai, United Arab Emirates -- Dubai International Airport welcomed a record 46 million passengers in the first half of this year, authorities said on Tuesday, despite disruptions due to the Iran-Israel war The facility marked its busiest first half on record with a 2.3 percent year-on-year growth, Dubai Airports said...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- Portuguese forward Joao Felix has signed a two-year deal with Saudi Arabia's Al Nassr, where he will join Cristiano Ronaldo, the club announced Tuesday. Felix, now 25, made a blockbuster move from Benfica to Atletico Madrid in 2019, but has since seen his fortunes decline. "I'm...

Palo Alto, United States - Palantir, an American data analysis and artificial intelligence company, has emerged as Silicon Valley's latest tech darling -- one that makes no secret of its macho, America-first ethos now ascendant in Trump-era tech culture. The company's reach spans the global economy, with banks, hospitals, the...

Gaza City, Palestinian Territories -- Truckloads of food reached hungry Gazans on Monday after Israel promised to open secure aid routes, but humanitarian agencies warned vast amounts more were needed to stave off starvation. With Gaza's population of more than two million facing famine and malnutrition, Israel bowed to international...

Dubai, UAE --  Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), the leading global financial center in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia (MEASA), said Monday that it witnessed a saw a record number of new firms establishing operations in the center in the first half of 2026. The total number of...

Brussels, Belgium -- The European Commission on Monday announced an investigation into the takeover of German chemical firm Covestro by UAE state oil giant ADNOC, citing competition fears. "The commission has preliminary concerns that foreign subsidies granted by the United Arab Emirates could distort the EU internal market," a statement...

Tunis, Tunisia - A towel draped over his head, Hamza Jabbari sets bags of plastic bottles onto a scale. He is among Tunisia's "barbechas", informal plastic recyclers whose increasing numbers reflect the country's economic -- and migratory -- woes. The 40-something-year-old said he starts the day off at dawn, hunching...

San Diego, United States - Godzilla has morphed over the years, but one constant is the devotion of its fans, who celebrated the Japanese monster's 70th anniversary at the pop culture convention Comic-Con. The Japanese studio Toho, which created Godzilla, maintains a calendar of events to celebrate the beast often...

Muscat, Oman -- The nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries reached US$587.8 billion by the end of the fourth quarter of 2024, up from US$579 billion at the end of the fourth quarter of 2023, reflecting a growth rate of 1.5 percent. The latest...

Shanghai, China -- Serving craft beer, playing mahjong, stacking shelves and boxing, the dozens of humanoid robots at Shanghai's World AI Conference (WAIC) this weekend were embodiments of China's growing AI prowess and ambition. The annual event is primed at showcasing China's progress in the ever-evolving field of artificial intelligence,...

Washington, United States -- The US deadline of August 1 for imposing tariffs on its trading partners is firm and there will be no extensions, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday. "So no extensions, no more grace periods. August 1, the tariffs are set. They'll go into place. Customs will...

Geneva, Switzerland -- The world urgently needs to find a global approach on regulating artificial intelligence, the United Nations' top tech chief said this week, warning that fragmentation could deepen risks and inequalities. Doreen Bogdan-Martin, head of the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU) agency, told AFP she hoped that AI...

Paris, France - France's foreign minister has called the CEO of Spanish airline Vueling to demand an "explanation" after dozens of French teenagers, all Jewish, were removed from a flight this week, Paris said on Saturday. During an incident on Wednesday, the Spanish airline said it had asked the adolescents...

United Nations, United States -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday slammed the international community for turning a blind eye to the suffering of Palestinians starving in the Gaza Strip, calling it a "moral crisis that challenges the global conscience." "I cannot explain the level of indifference and inaction we...

New Delhi, India - India has pushed hundreds of ethnic Bengali-speaking Muslims into Bangladesh without due process, Human Rights Watch said Thursday, accusing the government of flouting rules and fuelling bias on religious lines. The Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has long taken a hardline stance on...

Dubai, UAE — DP World Trade Finance has mobilized more than US$1 billion in working capital to support businesses across emerging markets, significantly narrowing the global trade finance gap and ensuring uninterrupted movement of goods through some of the world’s most difficult economic environments. This was achieved through a combination...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- A Saudi delegation of over 100 investors arrived in Damascus on Wednesday ahead of a conference aimed at securing billions of dollars in deals to help rebuild war-battered Syria. The kingdom has been one of the major backers of the new Syrian government that seized power...

Washington, United States - President Donald Trump sought Tuesday to distract from the growing furor over his administration's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal by pushing extraordinary claims that Barack Obama tried to mount a coup. The accusations, delivered in the Oval Office, followed a surprise announcement that Trump's...

Sydney, Australia -- Humans beat generative AI models made by Google and OpenAI at a top international mathematics competition, despite the programs reaching gold-level scores for the first time. Neither model scored full marks -- unlike five young people at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), a prestigious annual competition where...

Paris, France - Since at least the time of the ancient Egyptians, people across the world have gazed up in awe at Betelgeuse, one of the brightest stars blazing in the night sky. Now astronomers have discovered that this red supergiant, known to many as the hunter's shoulder in the...

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia -- The Saudi Ports Authority (Mawani) has added  CStar Line's new Far East-Red Sea service (FRS1) to Jeddah Islamic Port to enhance the port's competitiveness, expand its maritime network, boost operational efficiency, and solidify its position as a strategic logistics hub on the Red Sea. The FRS1...

Washington, United States - Donald Trump's past ties with Jeffrey Epstein are under scrutiny after the US president slammed a Wall Street Journal report that he sent a lewd letter to the infamous sex offender as "fake news." AFP looks at the pair's relationship as the Trump administration also faces...

Tehran, Iran - Iranian authorities have urged residents to limit water consumption as the country grapples with severe shortages amid an ongoing heatwave, local media said Sunday. Water scarcity is a major issue in Iran, particularly in arid provinces in the country's south, with shortages blamed on mismanagement and overexploitation...

Rabat, Morocco -- Tens of thousands of Moroccans demonstrated Sunday in the capital Rabat against the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, calling for the reversal of the kingdom's normalization deal with Israel. Protesters gathered in the city center, brandishing Palestinian flags and placards calling for the free flow...

Berlin, Germany -- Britain, France and Germany are planning to hold fresh talks with Iran on its nuclear programme in the coming days, a German diplomatic source told AFP on Sunday. The European powers, known as the E3, "are in contact with Iran to schedule further talks for the coming...

Washington, UAE -- Global gas flaring surged for a second year in a row, wasting about $63 billion in lost energy and setting back efforts to manage emissions and boost energy security and access. Flaring, the practice of burning natural gas during oil extraction, reached 151 billion cubic meters (bcm)...

The number of new investors in the market reached 59,075, with investments totaling $42.74 billion, a 22 percent increase in the number of investors and a 40 percent growth in investment value.

Kingston, Jamaica -- Scientists present at the latest effort to hash out international rules for deep-sea mining say it's unclear if it's possible to restore damaged sea floor ecosystems -- or how long it would take. One of the last wild zones on the planet, the sea floor is a...