The UAE has unveiled a locally developed probe for its Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt, marking a key step towards a planned 5 billion-kilometre journey to study seven asteroids.

The probe, developed, assembled and tested in the UAE, reached flight readiness in less than two years. It will be carried aboard the MBR Explorer spacecraft as part of the UAE’s second interplanetary mission.

Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, witnessed the unveiling.

Sheikh Hamdan said: “Guided by the vision of our leadership, the UAE has progressed in just a few years from aspiring to reach space to actively contributing to shaping its future. Since the establishment of the UAE Space Agency in 2014, the nation has developed an integrated national space ecosystem, launching satellites, placing the Hope Probe into orbit around Mars, and sending Emirati astronauts to the International Space Station. We continue to advance lunar missions and increasingly ambitious exploration projects.”

More than 150 specialised engineers and scientists have contributed to the wider mission, according to the official statement.

The MBR Explorer is expected to travel about 5 billion kilometres and study seven asteroids, with 269 Justitia as its seventh and final destination.

The mission is scheduled for launch in 2028.

The probe aims to descend toward 269 Justitia as its final destination

During the mission’s final stage, the UAE-developed probe is expected to separate from the MBR Explorer and autonomously descend toward 269 Justitia, collecting images and scientific data during its approach.

The mission aims to improve scientific understanding of the origins and evolution of water-rich asteroids and the distribution of water and organic material during the solar system’s formation.

The Technology Innovation Institute led the design, development and testing of the probe in the UAE, with other national institutions and universities also participating in the mission.

Sheikh Hamdan said the UAE space sector is valued at more than Dhs44bn and that the country aims to double the economic returns from the sector by 2031 as it seeks to rank among the world’s 10 leading space economies.

The Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt follows the UAE’s Emirates Mars Mission, which sent the Hope Probe into orbit around Mars in 2021.

Saudi Arabia has provided more than SAR224m ($59.7m) in new financial support for Yemen’s state budget, as the kingdom continues efforts to bolster the country’s economic stability and government finances.

The latest instalment, provided through the Saudi Development and Reconstruction Program for Yemen (SDRPY), will be used to cover government operating expenses and salaries, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said.

The funding, provided under directives from Saudi Arabia’s leadership, is aimed at ensuring the regular flow of government funds and salary payments.

Saudi authorities said the support would also help improve the efficiency of fiscal policy, strengthen household purchasing power and incomes, and stimulate commercial activity.

Saudi support for Yemen exceeds $12.6bn

Saudi Arabia said its development and economic interventions in Yemen totalled more than $12.6bn between 2012 and 2026.

The assistance has included deposits and grants to the Central Bank of Yemen aimed at supporting fiscal balance and broader macroeconomic stability.

According to SPA, the measures have helped strengthen the ability of Yemeni state institutions to continue delivering public services while easing economic and social pressures.

SDRPY has so far implemented 300 development projects and initiatives across eight sectors in Yemen, focusing on infrastructure, public services, institutional capacity and employment.

The latest support comes as Yemen continues to face severe economic pressures after more than a decade of conflict.

The World Bank said in May that Yemen’s economy contracted by 1.5 per cent in 2025 and is projected to shrink by a further 0.5 per cent in 2026. Oil exports remain blocked, while falling revenues have constrained government spending on salaries and essential services.

Nearly three-quarters of Yemen’s population is estimated to live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank.

Yemen conflict escalates

The financial support also comes amid a renewed escalation in Yemen’s conflict and hostilities involving the Houthis and Saudi Arabia.

On Sunday, Yemen’s internationally recognised government announced the start of military operations aimed at retaking territory controlled by the Houthis and extending state authority across the country.

The announcement followed a series of attacks and counter-attacks in recent weeks.

On Saturday, the Houthis said they had targeted an Aramco facility in Riyadh with ballistic missiles and drones.

The Houthis had also previously claimed attacks on Aramco facilities in Yanbu. Saudi Arabia said it intercepted six ballistic missiles fired towards Taif and the Yanbu area, but did not report damage to Aramco facilities.

Separately, the Saudi-led coalition said last week that the Houthis had attacked a power distribution station in Medina that supplies electricity to the Prophet’s Mosque, putting one transformer out of service without affecting the wider electricity network. The Houthis denied responsibility for the attack.

The renewed hostilities mark the most serious escalation between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis since a UN-brokered truce in 2022 largely halted cross-border attacks.

Saudi Arabia unexpectedly cut its oil prices for sale to Asia in November to six-year lows while raising them for northwest Europe and the Mediterranean, a pricing document showed on Monday.

The largest Middle Eastern crude exporter set the November Arab Light crude oil official selling price to Asia at $5 a barrel below the average of Oman and Dubai prices, down $3 from the previous month. The discount for November is the widest since June 2020, Reuters data showed.

This was against expectations of a hike of up to $5 a barrel for the November OSP in a Reuters survey, in line with gains seen in the Middle Eastern benchmarks.

State oil company Saudi Aramco cut the November OSPs of heavier grades, Arab Medium and Arab Heavy, sold to Asia by $5 a barrel.

Aramco has been looking at offering discounts for oil loaded off Oman to compensate buyers for record freight rates, people familiar with the matter said last week, as it sought to protect its market share after disruptions from the US-Israeli war against Iran affected exports.

The OSP cuts appeared to be aimed at compensating buyers for the elevated freight costs, said three Asian refining sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The cost of booking a very large crude carrier capable of hauling 2 million barrels of oil from the Gulf to China on a time charter basis was $1.2 million a day on Friday, according to LSEG data. It was about $80,000 a day a year ago.

One of the sources also said the lower OSPs could offset the waiting time and longer voyage for Saudi oil exported from the Egyptian port of Sidi Kerir, where cargo loadings have been delayed.

Since September, Saudi Aramco has sold millions of barrels of crude through ship-to-ship transfers outside the Strait of Hormuz, pushing oil flows through the strategic waterway to pre-conflict levels.

The kingdom also resumed loading at the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea after a brief suspension as a drone attack shut its key East-West oil pipeline.

Separately, Saudi Aramco raised the November OSPs for northwest Europe by $3 a barrel across all grades.

Aramco kept prices unchanged for buyers in the United States.

For years, customer experience has been measured by how quickly a company can respond when something goes wrong. A complaint arrives, a service issue is logged, a call is made and a solution is offered.

But that model is changing.

At AWR Group, the next frontier of customer experience is not simply fixing friction faster. It is identifying that friction before customers encounter it in the first place, using real-time customer insights, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence and a stronger data foundation to anticipate needs and reshape how the organisation makes decisions.

The shift comes as AWR Group places customer experience and AI among its strategic priorities, with the two agendas increasingly being developed as complementary parts of the same transformation.

“Technology itself does not create a competitive advantage; the advantage comes from combining AI and strong data foundations with human judgement and clear governance,” Mahesh Rohra, chief strategy officer, AWR Group, said.

That philosophy is at the centre of the group’s first unified CX Policy and Standards, designed to establish greater consistency across customer interactions while creating the data infrastructure needed to support more advanced digital capabilities.

From fragmented experiences to one customer view

As customer expectations rise across sectors, AWR Group sees consistency and trust becoming increasingly important sources of differentiation.

The group has responded by cleaning, consolidating and governing customer information into a single trusted “golden record”, reducing internal complexity while creating what it views as the foundation for advanced analytics and AI.

“Exceptional customer experience can no longer be fragmented across business units or touchpoints; it must be built on strong data foundations and clear governance,” Rohra said.

The unified CX Policy and Standards are intended to ensure that customer interactions, whether they take place in a showroom, service centre or through digital platforms, meet consistent expectations around quality, transparency and service.

The strategic significance goes beyond standardisation. With customer information unified, the organisation can potentially identify patterns across interactions that may otherwise remain hidden inside individual business units.

That creates the possibility of moving CX from a largely reactive function to a predictive one.

When AI becomes a customer-experience engine

AWR Group’s approach is not to position AI as a replacement for human interaction. Instead, the group sees technology as a way to remove operational complexity and give employees better information at the moment decisions need to be made.

“Rather than distancing us from our customers, AI eliminates operational complexity and delivers actionable customer insights at speed,” Rohra said.

The objective, he added, is to put digital capabilities into the hands of employees so they can make faster and smarter decisions while concentrating on areas where human involvement remains critical, empathy, bespoke service and trusted relationships.

That distinction could become increasingly important as AI becomes more widespread across industries. If access to AI tools becomes commonplace, technology itself may offer less differentiation. The competitive gap could instead come from how effectively companies connect those tools to reliable data, established processes and employee decision-making.

For AWR Group, that means embedding AI and automation directly into operations rather than treating them as isolated technology projects.

Predicting friction before customers feel it

The clearest expression of this strategy comes in the Group’s use of real-time customer insights and predictive analytics.

“Seamless customer experiences become the baseline expectation for modern consumers,” Rohra said. “AWR Group stays ahead of the moving bar by using real-time customer insights and predictive analytics to resolve friction points before the customer even notices them.”

That represents a fundamental change in the economics of CX.

Instead of waiting for customer feedback to reveal a problem, predictive systems can analyse operational and customer data to identify signals that may point to emerging friction. Employees can then act on those insights before the issue becomes a visible customer complaint.

The approach also connects CX directly to operational performance. Updating digital tools, standardising best practices across business units and providing employees with immediate access to data can help turn routine interactions into more personalised experiences.

Rohra said AWR Group’s market-leading Net Promoter Scores substantiate the progress of its CX transformation.

The broader ambition is to make customer experience an engine for productive growth rather than simply a measure of service quality.

From headcount-led growth to intelligence-led growth

The same principle is shaping AWR Group’s wider strategy as the UAE and the broader region undergo major economic and technological transformation.

National programmes including Vision 2030, We the UAE 2031, Operation 300bn, the National AI Strategy and UAE Net Zero 2050, alongside infrastructure developments such as Etihad Rail, are reshaping trade, connectivity and competitiveness, according to Rohra.

At the same time, traditional sector boundaries are becoming less distinct. Automotive is moving toward mobility and connectivity, logistics is evolving into data-driven platforms, while manufacturing is becoming increasingly automated and digital.

Against that backdrop, AWR Group is focusing less on expansion for its own sake and more on what Rohra describes as “productive growth”.

“Productive growth means delivering stronger margins, sharper customer insights, faster decision-making, and leaner, less complex operations,” he said.

That shift also changes how the group thinks about competitive advantage.

Rather than assuming that scale comes primarily from adding people, physical locations or assets, AWR Group is investing in capabilities that can allow the organisation to respond faster as markets evolve.

Agentic AI pushes decision-making further

Predictive analytics is only one part of that equation. AWR Group also sees Agentic AI as a technology capable of changing how work is performed and decisions are made.

According to Rohra, these technologies can transform raw enterprise data into forward-looking operational intelligence while automating complex, process-heavy activities such as inventory management, reporting and forecasting.

The result, he said, can be faster execution and less time spent by employees on repetitive work.

But the larger opportunity lies beyond automation.

“By synthesising vast market signals, internal knowledge, and operational data into clear, actionable insights, predictive technologies enable teams to navigate complex choices much faster,” Rohra said.

That model keeps human judgement at the centre while giving decision-makers a much larger and faster flow of information.

The biggest AI challenge is not the technology

The UAE’s AI opportunity is already drawing significant economic attention, with 2025 industry estimates cited by AWR Group suggesting AI could contribute around US$100bn to the country’s GDP by 2030.

For businesses, however, widespread access to AI may make implementation less of a technology race and more of an execution challenge.

“The real differentiator will not be access to technology, but the ability to deploy it responsibly and effectively,” Rohra said.

That requires clean and connected data, governance, redesigned workflows and employees who are comfortable using AI alongside their own judgement.

Without those foundations, companies can end up with disconnected pilots, inconsistent outputs and limited returns. With them, AI can become a repeatable enterprise capability supporting productivity, forecasting, decision-making and customer relevance.

People remain at the centre of the transformation

For all the focus on AI, AWR Group identifies employee adoption as the decisive factor in whether digital transformation delivers lasting value.

“Technology itself does not generate value; value is created when people understand, trust, and actively use these tools to improve their daily work,” Rohra said.

The Group is therefore combining technology deployment with learning and adoption initiatives, including the rollout of Gemini Enterprise, dedicated learning and development programmes and an internal AI Champions network.

The objective is to encourage peer-to-peer learning and practical experimentation, while allowing employees to combine professional expertise with digital tools.

That people-first approach reflects the central idea behind AWR Group’s CX strategy: technology works best when it strengthens human decision-making rather than attempting to replace it.

Building capabilities for a changing region

AWR Group is also translating its broader technology strategy into customer-facing propositions, including AWR Pay and AWR Charge+.

The initiatives form part of a wider effort to prepare for a business environment in which today’s competitors may not necessarily come from traditional industry categories.

“Tomorrow’s competitors may emerge from sectors that barely intersect today,” Rohra said.

Rather than trying to predict every market movement, the group is focusing on building the internal capabilities needed to respond when those movements occur.

That includes AI, automation, data governance, operational agility and a workforce capable of combining digital capability with human judgement.

In that environment, customer experience becomes more than a service metric. It becomes an early-warning system, a source of intelligence and potentially a mechanism for discovering what customers need before they have to articulate it.

The corporate competition of the next decade may therefore be defined by a deceptively simple question: who can understand the customer soonest?

For AWR Group, the answer lies in bringing together data, AI and human judgement, not to make customer relationships less human, but to give people the intelligence to make those relationships more relevant, responsive and enduring.

Crude oil exports from the Middle East rose above pre-war levels in four of the seven days of the final week of September, shipping data showed on Monday, despite attacks on vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Crude exports from the region exceeded pre-war levels on September 24 and between September 27 and 29, rising to between 19.5 million barrels per day and 22.5 million bpd, provisional data from ship-tracking firm Kpler showed.

Exports averaged 18 million bpd between March 2025 and February this year beforethe US-Israeli war with Iran began.

The 7-day moving average for crude exports was at 18.5 million bpd on October 1, the data showed. These include transits via the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea, exports from terminals and ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman.

The overall tally for crude, oil products, chemicals and non-gas liquids averaged 22.4 million bpd in the seven days to September 30, Kpler data showed.

The number of liquefied natural gas cargoes exiting the Strait of Hormuz also rose in September to its highest monthly level since February.

The figures exclude any vessels that might have crossed the strait with their Automatic Identification System transponders turned off to avoid detection.

Before the Iran war started on February 28, the strait typically handled about 125 large commercial vessels per day, including tankers, gas carriers, bulkers and container vessels, accounting for some 20% of the world’s daily crude oil and LNG supply.

Ship attacks

However, attacks on tankers continued in and around the Strait of Hormuz, with at least seven incidents reported, shipping intelligence firm Marisks said in a report on Saturday.

The very large crude carrier Kazimah III was reportedly struck on October 1 by an unknown projectile while operating in the strait, causing a fire onboard the tanker, it added.

“All crew members were reported safe and were subsequently evacuated from the vessel,” Marisks said.

Kazimah III was last seen discharging 2 million barrels of Kuwaiti crude at the Ras Markaz port on the coast of Oman on September 17, Kpler data showed. Its owner, Kuwait Oil Tanker Company, did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside office hours.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency has reported at least one attack a day in the Strait of Hormuz or in the Gulf of Aden since October 2.

Marisks said merchant vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz face a “heightened and increasingly unpredictable kinetic threat” given the recent sharp increase in traffic.

“Current intelligence suggests that the recent pattern of incidents may not necessarily represent deliberate targeting of individually selected merchant vessels,” Marisks said.

“Instead, available information indicates the possibility that Iranian forces are launching missiles into a predetermined engagement area or ‘kill box’, with weapons potentially acquiring and locking onto available radar signatures within that area.”

Physical presence within the engagement zone at the relevant time could itself represent the primary exposure, it added.