News Bites

In This Issue

Today’s issue will take around 5 minutes to read 🤓

Economy

• 🌍 It’s credit rating season in the Gulf, and Bahrain just scored a B+! 🎉 It seems pretty solid in the island kingdom, but they've still got that huge budget deficit hanging over them 🏦

• Saudi just snagged that top-tier A1 credit rating! 💸 With solid fiscal moves and a diversifying economy, the Kingdom’s future is looking pretty bright 🌟

• The 3rd "Make it in the Emirates" forum is about to drop this week in the UAE, aiming to rake in billions in investments 💰💰💰 The last 2 forums pulled in a whopping $33 billion in procurement deals. Can this one top that? 🤔

Real Estate

• Abu Dhabi is gearing up to build over 1,300 villas for UAE nationals 🏡 and it's gonna be epic! The project, called Al-Mizn Neighborhood, is set to cost a whopping $2.53 billion

  

• The Middle East is popping off with property developments worth a massive $1.68 trillion! 🌆💰 Tech companies are jumping fast to catch the hype wave 📈🚀

• Awqaf Real Estate Management, a top player in the Saudi real estate game, just automated 140 processes for transactions. Now, stuff like leasing, financing, and property management is all streamlined and high-tech 💼✨

Arts and Culture

• Is it racial profiling?? A female security guard has been catching some heat on the Cannes red carpet for uncomfortably ushering celebs like Kelly Rowland and Dominican actress, Massiel Taveras. Social distancing seems like the one thing we would like to keep from covid times 🙅🏾‍♀️

  

• In more fancy film news, a Saudi animated film has made waves at the prestigious Cannes festival! “Wa Isjod Wa Iqtareb” (“Prostrate and Draw Near”) won the “Animation That Matters” award during the networking part of the festival. It’s about how cleaning staff became the only ones to frequent the Grand Mosque in Makkah during the pandemic (we hope they SWEEP some more award shows soon) 🧹🎥

• While Ronaldo kicks a ball around for Team Saudi, his partner, Georgina, puckers up for Faces Middle East! She took a tour of the Riyadh store, got a facial analysis, and tried on a bunch of beauty products on her (flawless) face— any

Technology

• UAE’s telecom company, du, just hit new highs! It’s the 3rd strongest brand in the UAE and 7th in the Middle East, according to 2024 Brand Finance. Their brand value jumped 13% to $2.47 billion, moving them into the Top 25 Global Telecom brands from 33rd place. CEO Fahad Al Hassawi credits their cutting-edge tech and customer-first philosophy, especially with 5G 📱🛜

  

• IBM just dropped its "Granite" AI models, free for companies to tweak. These tools boost devs' coding speed. To make 💰, IBM has Watsonx, a paid service to keep models running smoothly. IBM’s strategy? Profit when customers use AI, no matter where it’s from. Plus, Saudi’s Data and AI Authority is using Watsonx to train their "ALLaM" Arabic model, adding more Arabic dialects to IBM’s offerings 🌐✨

✨ akhbaar Spotlight ✨

MSNBC canceled his show at a suspiciously vocal time for the British-American host, but this man cannot be stopped! Mehdi Hasan has been whiplashing opposing opinions during debates (AHEM Piers Morgan), while swinging logic and facts around like it’s nothing (we sometimes have to google if we’re using our washing machine correctly, but thnx for setting super high standards bro).

Catch more Mehdi content on his NEW independent media channel, Zeteo!

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