In 2024, a group of Chinese researchers entered one of the world’s least visited locations by sealing themselves inside a manned submersible named Fendouzhe, which translates to “Striver.” In the northwest Pacific, the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench descends to a depth of 10,542 meters. There, the temperature is slightly above freezing, the pressure is about a thousand times higher than it is at sea level, and no natural light has ever reached the area. There was a clear scientific consensus at the outset: microbes and possibly a few rare scavengers. Instead, what they discovered was published in Nature in August 2025 and…
There is a rock on Mars that has been crushed, cataloged, and examined more times…
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The King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in Riyadh doesn’t seem like the birthplace of international tech regulations. Footsteps are absorbed by the thick carpets. Besides the translation headsets are half-finished coffee cups. Attendees lean forward and pay close attention as presenters go over a topic that was previously thought to be solely Californian: the proper conduct of artificial intelligence. Silicon Valley is not the source of this conversation. In collaboration with the Islamic World Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority has started to develop an ethics charter that goes beyond governing AI in the…
On a Monday morning in early March 2026, the leadership team of the Chalhoub Group personally visited the Dubai Mall lobby to see how the employees who had consented to come in were doing. In Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, store attendance was made “voluntary”—a term that conveys a sense of the mood. The shops in Bahrain were just shut down. The vice president of communications for Chalhoub, which runs 900 stores in the area for companies ranging from Versace to Sephora, sent a cautious and measured message: employees who felt at ease came in. The others…
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