Did Iran capture a US submarine? Saudi Arabia's oil exports took another blow last week when drone attacks knocked out part of the country's East-West pipeline, halting oil flow and removing 4-5 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil from global supply. It is unclear how long repairs will take, although The Associated Press estimates three to five weeks, citing two regional officials. The 1,200km (746-mile) pipeline connects the kingdom's main oil-producing fields in the east of the country with Yanbu port on the Red Sea coast in the west, allowing Saudi crude to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, which has largely remained closed since the United States-Israel war on Iran began on February 28. As the world's second-largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia's ability to keep crude flowing has significant consequences for global energy markets.

Donald Trump's son-in-law represents the kind of Washington figure for whom public office serves as a means to extraordinary wealth. "Kushner is plagued with conflicts of interest," Virginia Canter, a former White House counsel, said. "He is supposed to be working for the American people, but in fact he has tremendous financial incentives to further the interests of his investors." In the waning hours before the U.S. went to war with Iran, this February, Jared Kushner held a meeting with Iranian negotiators in Geneva--one last chance to avoid a conflict that would plunge the region into chaos and shock the world economy. Afterward, Kushner dismissed his counterparts as unworthy of his time. "Lots of tricks," he told reporters. Kushner, the boyish-looking son-in-law of Donald Trump, has been given an extraordinary brief in recent years. Along with Steve Witkoff, the President's special envoy, he has been charged with ending wars in Gaza, Ukraine, and just about anywhere else they might break out. Kushner, who is forty-five, has little regard for the craft of diplomacy. In his view, it is less important to know a region's history or the details of the partisans' negotiating positions than to simply hear the sides out and split the difference. Peace deals are like real-estate deals, he has said. Both involve hard bargaining and, at times, bluffing. The fact that so many diplomats before him have struggled is a testament not to the intransigence of international problems but to the mediocrity of his predecessors. "I've been getting criticized for the last couple of years, by all the people who have tried and failed, for not doing this the same way that they have," he said in 2020, after Trump unveiled his first Middle East peace plan. "If somebody was successful, I wouldn't be dealing with this." When Kushner and Witkoff began meeting with the Iranian negotiators, in February, the two countries were on the brink of war. In 2025, American and Israeli forces had bombed Iran's nuclear-enrichment facilities, which Western leaders said were engaged in a decades-long drive to develop a nuclear weapon. Afterward, Trump declared that Iran's capability to enrich uranium had been "obliterated." Yet Trump and other Western officials wanted further concessions. The Iranians maintained a large stockpile of lower-grade uranium. It was buried under rubble from the bombing in 2025, but Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, insisted that the Iranians give it up and forswear any intention of enriching uranium in the future. Trump sent Kushner and Witkoff to present the Iranians with what amounted to a binary choice: turn over their entire stockpile or expect an attack. To emphasize his threats, he had dispatched an armada to the Middle East. "We have to have a meaningful deal, otherwise bad things happen," he said.

Three theme parks will be built near Paris as part of a €6bn (£5.13bn) deal agreed between France and Saudi Arabia. The new development is expected to include a manga-themed park, inspired by the popular Japanese franchise Dragon Ball Z. French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the move as on a scale not seen since Disneyland Paris, and added you know my interest for manga. An opening date for the parks - which will be built near Cergy-Pontoise - has not set by the Élysée Palace, but they will open in stages and construction is expected to take years. The project was given the green light during a two-day state visit to France by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It stemmed from a previous discussion between Macron and bin Salman about their shared passion for Japanese comics, in particular Dragon Ball Z, advisers to the president told reporters on Monday.

China-based team AG.AL have been crowned surprise winners of the Esports World Cup (EWC) after seven weeks of competition in Paris. The team claimed the tournament trophy and $7m (£5.1m) top prize at a ceremony attended by French President Emmanuel Macron, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Fifa boss Gianni Infantino. Bosses moved the contest, which was due to be held in Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh, to France at the last minute due to safety concerns over the conflict between the US and Iran in the Middle East. The event has attracted criticism from some fans due to Saudi Arabia's ongoing involvement, but organisers the Esports Foundation said it had attracted more viewers this year. Image caption, He's never got his hands on football's World Cup, but Cristiano Ronaldo was on hand to reveal the esports version Although it is branded as a World Cup, players in the EWC don't compete for their countries but as individuals or in a team, fighting it out across popular video games such as Call of Duty and League of Legends.

How Saudi Arabia's spending spree reached the end of the line Autocratic monarchs once left an echo of their glory in the ruins of the megaprojects they commanded at the peak of their unchallenged power. Those monumental physical traces are to be found in the fertile plains, mountainsides and deserts of the Middle East. But one of their most prominent modern counterparts may only have a digital footprint to leave behind for some of his most ambitious concepts. A decade ago, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman - or MBS as he is widely known - decreed a revisioning of his country that leapt from the realm of science fiction. It was called Vision 2030. Extraordinary monolithic structures were to help bring forth new technological marvels not just for the Kingdom but for the world.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming public - sector processes worldwide, yet standardized measures rarely address the unique drivers, governance models, and cultural nuances of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. This study employs a theory - driven foundation derived from an in - depth analysis of literature review and six National AI Strategies (NASs), coupled with a data - driven approach that utilizes a survey of 203 mid - and senior - level government employees and advanced statistical techniques (K - Means clustering, Principal Component Analysis, and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling). By combining policy insights with empirical evidence, the research develops and validates a novel AI Adoption Index specifically tailored to the GCC public sector. Findings indicate that robust technical infrastructure and clear policy mandates exert the strongest influence on successful AI implementations, overshadowing organizational readiness in early adoption stages. The combined model explains 70% of the variance in AI outcomes, suggesting that resource - rich environments and top - down policy directives can drive rapid but uneven technology uptake. By consolidating key dimensions (Technical Infrastructure (TI), Organizational Readiness (O R), and Governance Environment (GE)) into a single composite index, this study provides a holistic yet context - sensitive tool for benchmarking AI maturity. The index offers actionable guidance for policymakers seeking to harmonize large - scale deployments w ith ethical and regulatory standards. Beyond advancing academic discourse, these insights inform more strategic allocation of resources, cross - country cooperation, and capacity - building initiatives, thereby supporting sustained AI - driven transformation in the GCC region and beyond.

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The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) raises a central question: are investments in compute infrastructure matched by an equally robust build-out of skills, incentives, and governance? Grounded in socio-technical systems (STS) theory, this mixed-methods study audits workforce preparedness across Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman. We combine term frequency--inverse document frequency (TF--IDF) analysis of six national AI strategies (NASs), an inventory of 47 publicly disclosed AI initiatives (January 2017--April 2025), paired case studies, the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) and the Saudi Data & Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) Academy, and a scenario matrix linking oil-revenue slack (technical capacity) to regulatory coherence (social alignment). Across the corpus, 34/47 initiatives (0.72; 95% Wilson CI 0.58--0.83) exhibit joint social--technical design; country-level indices span 0.57--0.90 (small n; intervals overlap). Scenario results suggest that, under our modeled conditions, regulatory convergence plausibly binds outcomes more than fiscal capacity: fragmented rules can offset high oil revenues, while harmonized standards help preserve progress under austerity. We also identify an emerging two-track talent system, research elites versus rapidly trained practitioners, that risks labor-market bifurcation without bridging mechanisms. By extending STS inquiry to oil-rich, state-led economies, the study refines theory and sets a research agenda focused on longitudinal coupling metrics, ethnographies of coordination, and outcome-based performance indicators.

Over the course of an eight-minute interview, Elon Musk touted his numerous businesses and vision of a "Star Trek future" while telling the crowd that his Tesla Optimus robots had performed a dance for Donald Trump and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, to the tune of YMCA. He also announced that Starlink, his satellite internet company, had struck a deal for use in Saudi Arabia for maritime and aviation usage; looking to the near future, he expressed his desire to bring Tesla's self-driving robotaxis to the country. "We could not be more appreciative of having a lifetime partner and a friend like you, Elon, to the Kingdom," Saudi Arabia's minister of communications and IT, Abdullah Alswaha, told Musk. Although Musk has pivoted away from his role as de facto leader of the so-called "department of government efficiency" and moved out of the White House, the Saudi summit showed how he is still retaining his proximity to the US president and international influence. As Musk returns to his businesses as his primary focus, he is still primed to reap the rewards of his connections and political sway over Trump.

Former President Donald Trump is embarking this week on a high-stakes tour of the Persian Gulf region, targeting business deals and strategic partnerships with three oil-rich nations: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. The trip marks Trump's first major foreign visit of his new term and comes as nuclear negotiations with Iran drag on and as war continues between Israel and the Palestinian terror organization, Hamas, in the Gaza Strip. While business is the official focus, the backdrop is anything but calm. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described the mission as part of Trump's broader vision that "extremism is defeated [through] commerce and cultural exchanges." Under President Joe Biden, U.S. relations with Gulf states cooled, particularly after Biden vowed to make Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a "pariah" over the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.