Mars has been wearing a convincing disguise for decades. It appeared to be exactly what most scientists believed it to be: a dead, desiccated planet where any water had long since disappeared into thin air or frozen into the poles. The exterior was covered in rust and dust. Now that image is slowly disintegrating. A number of revelations over the last year have begun to construct a case that is hard to reject. There might be enough liquid water somewhere between three and five miles below the Martian surface to fill the entire planet with an ocean that is almost…
When a piece of science emerges that subtly renders the textbooks from the previous ten…
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…
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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