United Arab Emirates

Attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz hit a record high, Handelsblatt reports. Reuters says an oil spill off the UAE widened, closing more beaches.

Geopolitics

Brent eased from a six-month high on Monday. IEA chief Fatih Birol sees no normalisation of energy markets before 2027.

Economy

An oil slick from a tanker reportedly hit by a mine in the Strait of Hormuz has washed ashore in the UAE, and authorities have closed beaches in Umm Al Quwain. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that the war against the United States and Israel has changed security conditions and that Hormuz shipping will not return to its pre-war standard.

Geopolitics

Ras Al Khaimah has closed all beaches until further notice because of an oil spill off the UAE coast, The National reports. Al Jazeera says a vessel reportedly hit a naval mine in early October.

Geopolitics

Russia and Ukraine agreed a local ceasefire to evacuate civilians from occupied Oleshky, which the White House says Melania Trump secured. Trilateral talks with the US are planned for early November.

Geopolitics

Gunmen opened fire on a funeral at a Greek Orthodox church in Karak on Friday, killing seven and wounding dozens. King Abdullah II vowed the harshest retaliation.

Geopolitics

Houthi forces have encircled Taiz and hit Aden's airport while attacking Saudi Arabia. Egypt and the UAE are moving to support Riyadh.

Geopolitics

Japan will invest about $21 billion in up to two chip factories in New York State, GlobalFoundries said on Wednesday. The company will operate them.

Technology

Iran's Revolutionary Guards say they hit a third supertanker in the Strait of Hormuz within two days. Tehran is still reviewing Washington's reply to its seven-point plan, with mediators relaying messages.

Geopolitics

Emirati investigators say the co-pilot accused of attacking the captain on a flydubai flight to Israel drifted toward extremism while a student in Australia, the New York Times reports. Samir Mohtadi, whose Melbourne Islamic community centre UAE prosecutors have linked to the co-pilot, rejects what he calls false accusations.

Geopolitics

A US jet disabled a ship leaving Iran, and tankers burned near Hormuz and Sohar. Iran called Washington's reply to its seven conditions insufficient.

Geopolitics

Trump said on Thursday the US will not attack Iran before the 3 November midterms, citing talks with Tehran. Iran's Revolutionary Guards meanwhile hit tankers beyond Hormuz.

Geopolitics

The UAE attorney general said on Friday that the Omani co-pilot who tried to seize a Dubai-Tel Aviv flight meant to crash it into a Ben Gurion airport terminal. The suspect says he acted alone.

Geopolitics

SoftBank founder and chief executive Masayoshi Son has held talks with senior figures in the UAE in recent weeks, the Financial Times reports. According to the FT, as relayed by Reuters, the group is seeking up to $100bn from Gulf investors for its AI push.

Economy

The World Bank forecasts that the Middle East economy will shrink 2.1% in 2026 and Gulf economies 4.3%, the Jerusalem Post reports. Asian states are building oil buffers in response to the Iran war, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE joining a Japan-led push, according to Reuters and Bloomberg.

Economy

New Zealand authorities have launched their own investigation as the alleged hijacker's training there comes under scrutiny: Hamam al-Hammami spent 175 days in the country until May 2019, The Guardian reports. Reuters reports, citing sources, that Saudi Arabia has opened an air safety probe, while the Jerusalem Post says police are examining aviation security failures at the Transport Ministry.

Geopolitics

An Omani co-pilot attacked the captain of a flydubai flight to Tel Aviv, and Israeli passengers overpowered him. Israeli agencies now dispute who should have vetted him.

Geopolitics

Iran has rejected Trump's threat to declare the Strait of Hormuz US territory, saying its blockade holds until Washington concedes defeat. Attacks on shipping are multiplying.

Geopolitics

A magnitude 7.7 earthquake off Indonesia's Flores island killed at least 51 people on Saturday. The toll rose through the day as rescuers reached outlying villages.

Geopolitics

Washington is preparing new economic measures to force Tehran to capitulate after almost six months of war. Iran says its ports and oil output are holding up.

Economy

Houthi missiles and drones hit residential areas of government-held Marib on Saturday and again overnight. Yemen's government calls the attacks an escalation; the port of Mokha has halted operations.

Geopolitics

Crude closed Friday with a weekly gain of about 6 percent, with the Strait of Hormuz shut since February. Economists warn Iran's economy is nearing collapse.

Economy

BP, Abu Dhabi's XRG and Qatar's UCC have won the licence for phase two of Venezuela's offshore Loran gasfield, among the first large foreign investments since the US ousted Nicolás Maduro in January.

Economy

The UAE accuses Iran of attacking two ADNOC ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday evening. Tehran says no ship may pass without its permission.

Geopolitics

Colombia's toll from Monday's magnitude 7.4 quake is now put at 265 to 281 dead, with about 380 people missing and more than 40,000 families affected. Rescuers made a final push on Thursday as the 72-hour window closed.

Geopolitics

The data and AI company closed a $5 billion strategic funding round on Thursday that values it at $190 billion, according to Bloomberg. MGX of the United Arab Emirates co-led the round, The National reported.

Technology

The IEA and OPEC both trimmed their oil forecasts on Wednesday, blaming the blocked Strait of Hormuz. Crude fell on Thursday after five days of gains.

Economy

Iran plans to join the BRICS development bank while wartime layoffs mount. Oil rose again on Wednesday, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Economy

Explosive drones hit fuel tanks at Libya's Zawiya oil complex, a day after a car bomb killed the military intelligence chief of Khalifa Haftar's forces. Crews brought the fires under control on Tuesday.

Geopolitics

Crude extended its gains on Monday and equities slipped after the weekend brought no breakthrough on the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has tempered hopes of a swift reopening.

Economy

Daniel Kinahan appeared before a Dublin court after his extradition from Dubai, and Irish prosecutors charged him with directing a criminal organisation. Le Monde reports that the 49-year-old was remanded in custody, accused of running the KOCG between 2015 and 2017; according to Politika, the group smuggled weapons and drugs worth tens of millions of dollars into Europe.

Geopolitics

Tehran says a deal with Oman on the Strait of Hormuz is close but will not itself reopen the waterway. The UAE blames an Iranian missile for Saturday's strike on an Adnoc tanker.

Geopolitics

Abu Dhabi's Adnoc said on Friday that missile and drone attacks have hit 15 of its vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, killing one crew member and wounding 20. Iranian crude exports from Kharg Island have been at a standstill under the renewed US blockade.

Geopolitics

A US official said on Friday that Washington expects an Iran-Oman agreement to reopen commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz within days. Whether Iran may charge passing ships remains unresolved.

Geopolitics

Volatile electricity demand from AI workloads is damaging the data centres that run those workloads, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The same day it reported that a sovereign fund from the United Arab Emirates is weighing $6.3 billion for a Japanese AI data centre, and that US authorities said Oklo's small nuclear reactor had reached criticality.

Technology

Wall Street closed at record highs on Tuesday after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said a deal with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz could be close. Brent crude fell below $80 for the first time in nearly a month.

Economy

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that negotiations with Iran are under way and are Tehran's "last chance" before what he called a "decapitation". Iran's foreign ministry denies any contact with Washington and says it is talking only to Oman.

Geopolitics

US Central Command says 35 commercial ships have been rerouted at the blockaded Strait of Hormuz as of Sunday. Iran's Foreign Ministry says a route agreement with Oman alone will not reopen the waterway.

Economy

A Hamas representative says the Palestinian side has fulfilled everything required of it and that decisions on collecting weapons rest with Palestinians alone. The UAE on Saturday welcomed the disarmament agreement announced two days earlier.

Geopolitics

States affected by the Iran war are working on a new order for the Middle East whose centre of gravity is a Sunni axis of what FAZ calls the "regional four", led by Saudi Arabia. Jacobin argues in a separate analysis that the rivalry between the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates is itself fuelling a series of wars beyond the Arabian Peninsula.

Geopolitics

Russia's Federal Security Service charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with what it calls facilitating terrorist activity, accusing him of failing to remove channels and bots that Moscow says Ukrainian services used to recruit people and coordinate attacks, and placed him on an international wanted list. Meduza notes that two Russian agencies give different numbers in the case, and Le Monde reports that lawyers point to French law, which bars the extradition of French citizens, as Durov is, to third countries such as Russia or the United Arab Emirates.

Technology

Oman has put a Gulf-backed proposal to Tehran to manage and reopen the Strait of Hormuz jointly, modelled on the Strait of Malacca with voluntary fees for passing ships. Iran's deputy foreign minister rejected an equal split of the transit routes, demanded one lane entirely under Iranian control plus part of the second, and said the waterway stays closed unless Muscat accepts. US Central Command said it has redirected 18 commercial vessels since resuming its naval blockade of Iran on 14 July.

Geopolitics

The Chinese lab Moonshot AI has published the key infrastructure technologies behind its Kimi K3 model as open source, according to Global Times, which calls K3 the world's largest open-weight model. Only that single, Chinese state-affiliated report is available so far, and it gives no parameter count, licence terms or benchmark figures. The step strengthens the camp that distributes model weights freely against the closed frontier labs.

Technology

The United Arab Emirates and the United States agreed to jointly develop artificial-intelligence applications for military use, The National reported. No further details of the arrangement were given in the report.

Technology

Nvidia has created an Open Secure AI Alliance with a cyber security focus to defend openly downloadable AI models, and Abu Dhabi's G42 said on Monday it would join a membership of at least 38 companies. Days earlier, a letter signed by 25 large firms, among them Microsoft and IBM, endorsed open-weight models. At the same time the Chinese start-up Moonshot set out licence conditions for its Kimi K3 model, while investors and policymakers remain split over how safe freely usable systems are.

Technology

Dozens of ships are still crossing the Red Sea despite the Houthi blockade, but disruption is scattered and uncertainty over the passage is growing by the hour. At the same time, tanker crossings through the Strait of Hormuz have fallen to their lowest level in two months as the Iran war repeatedly interrupts commercial shipping. Companies and port operators are responding not by rerouting cargo but by rebuilding where goods are made, stored and moved.

Economy

The United Arab Emirates finalised a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with Canada aimed at reducing trade barriers, The National reported. No further terms were given in the report.

Economy