Middle East
Sovereign wealth, energy transition, and geopolitical fault lines converge here in ways that ripple far past the region itself. The economies built on oil are racing to build what comes after it.
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Sep- 2026 -19 SeptemberPower
Trump arms tariff weapon against China’s Russian energy imports days before Xi arrives
A new US law signed September 18 lets Trump impose up to 100 percent tariffs on the five largest buyers of Russian oil and gas—China and India absorb 85 percent…
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16 SeptemberTech & AI
Iran’s strikes erased AWS’s entire Bahrain cloud region permanently
Amazon declared the me-south-1 region and one UAE availability zone unrecoverable on September 15 after March and April missile strikes, turning a regional outage into permanent data loss for customers…
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16 SeptemberTech & AI
Anthropic arrives in Singapore to challenge OpenAI’s regional grip
Claude's unusually high per-capita usage in Singapore gives Anthropic product pull, but OpenAI's government partnership and S$300 million commitment present a formidable barrier to converting demand into enterprise contracts.
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16 SeptemberCompass
Dubai’s recovery is real. The security warnings aren’t going away.
With 869,000 international visitors in August 2026 and hotel occupancy at 66%, the UAE is pushing Western governments to lift travel advisories—but insurance policies and corporate travel rules still key…
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14 SeptemberTech & AI
Missile strikes force UAE to scatter its 5GW AI campus across emirates
After March drone attacks damaged AWS facilities in the Gulf, Abu Dhabi is redesigning its flagship Stargate project as a network of hardened, dispersed sites with air defences and underground…
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14 SeptemberCapital
Malaysia charges ex-minister over $211 million haj fund transfer
Former religious affairs minister Jamil Khir Baharom pleaded not guilty to three counts of causing Lembaga Tabung Haji to transfer RM860.3 million to Saudi property group Al-Rawda, marking the first…
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13 SeptemberCapital
India and Russia build a digital currency bridge to fix their lopsided trade
A $50 billion trade deficit is pushing the Reserve Bank of India and Russia's central bank to develop a CBDC settlement channel, disclosed at the New Delhi BRICS summit this…
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7 SeptemberCapital
Standard Chartered puts Bitcoin and Ether on FX rails in Dubai
The UK bank's DIFC unit now routes deliverable spot trades through the same electronic systems institutions use for foreign exchange, with DFSA-licensed custody already in place.
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7 SeptemberPower
UAE builds Hormuz bypass as Gulf trust fractures over Iran
Presidential adviser Anwar Gargash warned that restoring regional confidence could take decades, while the Emirates expands eastern ports and rail to shield energy exports from strait disruption.
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5 SeptemberCapital
Uzbekistan is quietly rewriting Central Asia’s fintech map
With 39% of adults still unbanked, Tashkent's $1 billion strategy and September 2026 open-banking launch aim to displace Kazakhstan as the region's financial technology hub.
