After midnight, the desert outside of Abu Dhabi is especially quiet. the kind of silence that occasionally muffles footsteps, traffic, and even the wind. The team at Al Khatim Astronomical Observatory operates in that quiet, and on the weekend of June 14, 2025, a new, faint but distinct point of light emerged in the southern sky. The star, designated AT 2025nlr, was located in the constellation Lupus, which is referred to as Al Sab, or “The Seven,” in ancient Arabic. By all standards, it was a minor tale. It was somewhat of a turning point in the history of astronomy…
When NASA made its announcement in early February, it sounded almost professional. The agency’s engineers…
Spotlight
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…
Regulators at central banks all over the world came to the same uncomfortable conclusion in the months following the 2008 financial crisis: they had been observing the wrong things. The information was there. The jobs were there. There were connections between banks, hedge funds, and mortgage-backed securities—somewhere in filing systems, spreadsheets, and quarterly reports dispersed throughout thousands of organizations. There was no way to read it all at once, in real time, and comprehend its collective meaning before it was too late. A new generation of AI-driven financial research is attempting to bridge that gap. And Abu Dhabi is putting…
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