The European Commission (EU) is preparing proposals to introduce age-based restrictions on children’s access to social media and other digital services, as the European Union seeks to strengthen protections for minors online.

EU President Ursula von der Leyen said the commission would prepare recommendations and legislative proposals following the work of a special panel on child safety online, with a formal proposal expected after the summer.

The proposed approach would introduce a phased system based on age groups. Children under the age of 13 would have limited access to social media platforms under the supervision of parents, caregivers or teachers, with restrictions gradually eased as they get older.

The recommendations would also cover a broader category of digital services referred to as “Social Media Plus”, extending beyond traditional social media platforms to include services that may pose risks to children.

Speaking after receiving the panel’s report, von der Leyen said the commission would prepare both recommendations and legislative proposals, with a formal proposal expected in September.

She said in her speech: ” The data reveal the facts. Across Europe, young people now spend four to six hours per day on screens. Six hours every day – this adds up to twenty years of their life. At the same time, across Europe, almost 60 per cent of young children have experienced emotional or psychosocial problems online. And day and night, parents too well see the consequences of this: loss of sleep, depression, anxiety, cyberbullying, exposure to harmful content. All this is happening while our children’s brains are still developing. We cannot expect children to succeed in a system that was never designed with their wellbeing in mind, when they are most vulnerable.”

“We in Europe believe that parents bring up our kids, not predatory algorithms,” she added. “It is clear we need age-appropriate restrictions to platforms. This is not about whether children can access social media. It is about whether and when social media can access our children.”

The recommendations also extend beyond traditional social media to a broader category of online services described as “Social Media Plus”, covering platforms with age-inappropriate or addictive features.

Safety by design approach is key for social media, says EU President

Von der Leyen said the EU should adopt a “safe by design” approach, placing responsibility on technology companies rather than children or parents.

“We do not expect children to design their own seatbelts. We do not expect parents to fit airbags at home. And the very same must be true for big tech,” she said.

The commission said it would use the expert panel’s recommendations as it develops proposals to protect children better online, building on existing measures including the Digital Services Act and broader work on child safety online.

Read: UAE bans social media for children under the age of 15

The UAE Ministry of Defence (MOD) said on Tuesday that national tankers, Mombasa and Al Bahiyah, were targeted by two Iranian cruise missiles while transiting the southern shipping lane of the Strait of Hormuz within Omani territorial waters.

The attack killed one Indian crew member aboard the Mombasa tanker and injured eight others, including four who sustained serious injuries, the ministry said in a statement on the social media platform, X.

The injured crew members include six Indian nationals and two Ukrainian nationals, according to the ministry.

The attack also caused material damage to both vessels after fires broke out onboard, which have since been brought under control.

Attack on tankers represents breach of international law: UAE MOD

The Ministry of Defence condemned what it described as a “blatant attack”, saying it was a serious violation of international law that threatened regional security and stability.

“The UAE reserves its full right to respond to this escalation and to take all necessary measures to protect its territory, its citizens and residents,” the ministry said, adding that any response would safeguard the country’s sovereignty, security, stability and national interests.

The ministry said it remained at the highest level of readiness and preparedness to address threats and was taking measures to respond to any attempts to undermine the country’s security.

It also urged the public to rely on official sources for information and avoid circulating rumours or unverified reports.

Read: Qatar LNG vessel hit and damaged while transiting Strait of Hormuz

Read: What you need to know: US-Iran conflict escalates with fresh Gulf attacks

Approve a bank login with UAE Pass or open a service on TAMM, and the whole process takes a few seconds. What you do not see is the layer of security that makes those seconds trustworthy.

The moment you connect, your device and the government service establish a cryptographic handshake. They create a shared secret, verify the service’s digital certificate, and establish an authenticated encrypted channel before sensitive information is exchanged. That process protects your data and ensures you are communicating with the genuine service, not an imposter. It relies on public-key cryptography, specifically algorithms such as RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC), which underpin almost every modern digital government service.

It is a layer of technology that has done its job so quietly, and so reliably, that few people outside cybersecurity ever think about it. Now it is being rebuilt.

Today’s public-key cryptography is secure because the mathematical problems behind it are effectively impossible for conventional computers to solve within a practical timeframe. A sufficiently capable, fault-tolerant quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm would change that. It could solve those problems within practical timeframes, undermining the cryptographic systems used to establish trust and secure digital communications. No such machine exists today, and estimates for when one might arrive vary widely, which is exactly why the arrival date is the wrong thing to plan around.

Replacing cryptography across an entire national digital estate is a multi-year undertaking. The clock that matters is not the countdown to a quantum computer capable of breaking today’s encryption, but how long the migration itself takes, and every month spent without a plan comes off that runway.

The risk is not only future attacks. Adversaries can capture encrypted communications today and store them until quantum computers become capable of decrypting them, a strategy often described as “harvest now, decrypt later.” For information that must remain confidential for years, the transition has already begun.

Transformation is outrunning its foundation

This is one of the largest technology transitions governments have faced because public-key cryptography is woven throughout digital infrastructure rather than confined to a single system. It protects digital identities, certificates, VPNs, payment systems, software updates, cloud services, firmware inside connected devices, and the digital signatures that establish trust across government systems. Much of it sits inside legacy platforms or commercial products that governments do not directly control.

The challenge is also more focused than many people assume. Symmetric encryption, which protects stored data, remains comparatively resilient against quantum attacks and can generally be strengthened by using larger key sizes. The primary exposure lies in public-key cryptography, the technology used to establish trust, authenticate identities, exchange cryptographic keys, and verify digital signatures.

Fortunately, governments no longer have to wait for the standards. The first generation of international post-quantum cryptographic standards is now available, giving organisations a clear destination for migration.

Yet many organisations cannot begin that journey because they lack a basic inventory of where cryptography is actually used.

Every new application, citizen portal, digital identity platform, or connected device adds another layer of cryptography that will eventually require migration. Many organisations can identify their critical applications but cannot confidently answer more fundamental questions: Where is cryptography being used? Which algorithms are running? Which systems depend on them?

Cryptographic discovery: The first step

Cryptographic discovery is a read-only exercise. It does not touch a single running service. Done well, it examines network traffic, certificates, cryptographic libraries, source code, software dependencies, cryptographic APIs, and key management systems, surfacing cryptography in the places people forgot it lived: keys hardcoded into applications, certificates trusted for years, libraries buried inside operational equipment, and outdated algorithms embedded deep within commercial software. The result is a complete inventory of every cryptographic asset, algorithm, certificate, and dependency mapped to the systems that rely on them.

You cannot modernise what you cannot see. Before organisations can plan a post-quantum migration, they need visibility into where cryptography is being used, which algorithms are deployed, and which systems depend on them. Cryptographic discovery provides that foundation, transforming what would otherwise be a complex migration into a structured, risk-based program.

This is already happening at national scale in the UAE, where the Cyber Security Council and QuantumGate have partnered to automate cryptographic discovery across complex national infrastructure, providing organisations with visibility into the foundations of digital trust before migration begins.

A single scan does not stay accurate for long. Certificates are issued and replaced, systems scale up and down, software is rebuilt, and a vendor update quietly swaps one algorithm for another. Within a release cycle, the picture is out of date. Discovery therefore has to run continuously, built into software development, certificate lifecycle management, and operational processes so weak, vulnerable, or expiring cryptography is identified as it appears. Much of the value is immediate, regardless of the quantum timeline: improved certificate management, fewer outages caused by expired certificates, stronger compliance, continuous audit readiness, and ongoing visibility into an organisation’s cryptographic posture.

Designing for the next transition

The systems being built now will determine how manageable the next change is. Build them so the choice of cryptographic algorithm is a configurable policy rather than an assumption embedded in application code, and the next transition becomes an upgrade instead of a rebuild.

During the migration, systems can operate in a hybrid mode that combines classical cryptography with post-quantum cryptography. For example, a classical key exchange mechanism can run alongside a post-quantum key encapsulation mechanism, ensuring that communications remain protected unless both approaches are compromised. This enables organisations to adopt quantum-resistant security while maintaining interoperability with existing infrastructure.

For systems that cannot be modified directly — mainframes, industrial control systems, operational technology, and vendor appliances — the practical approach is often to deploy quantum-safe gateways that protect communications without requiring changes to the underlying applications.

Trust is becoming a national capability

As governments continue to digitise essential public services, cryptography is becoming a matter of national capability rather than simply an IT function.

The ability to discover, manage, and modernise cryptography within national borders helps governments maintain visibility over critical digital assets, certificate infrastructure, and trust services that underpin everything from citizen identity to financial transactions.

Countries that can demonstrate confidence in the security of their digital foundations will be better positioned to attract investment, protect critical infrastructure, and strengthen public trust in digital government.

Cryptographic resilience is not a destination that governments eventually reach. It is an ongoing capability that must evolve alongside the services it protects.

Citizens rarely think about the cryptography behind the services they use every day, and that is precisely the point. Trust works best when it is invisible. The governments that invest in protecting that invisible foundation today will be the ones their citizens continue to trust in a post-quantum future.

Firefighting teams from the UAE Armed Forces have brought a fire under control at a warehouse in Zayed Military City, with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirming that no injuries were reported.

In a statement posted on X, the ministry said the incident involved a brush fire caused by the burning of some wood and old ammunition stored in one of the warehouses within Zayed Military City.

The MoD said Armed Forces firefighting teams responded to the incident and successfully contained the blaze, preventing any reported casualties.

“The Ministry of Defense confirms that the fire has been brought under control and there are no injuries,” the ministry said.

The ministry urged the public to rely on its official communication channels for accurate information regarding the incident.

Dubai remains a competitive global hub for affluent individuals, offering relative value across luxury real estate, premium vehicles, jewellery and travel despite a global rise in the cost of a premium lifestyle, according to the Julius Baer Global Wealth and Lifestyle Report 2026.

The report said Dubai ranked 14th in this year’s index, with the shift in position largely reflecting higher costs in other global wealth centres rather than a decline in the emirate’s affordability.

Globally, the cost of a premium lifestyle increased by an average of 10.2 per cent in US dollar terms over the past year, driven mainly by currency fluctuations rather than local inflation, Julius Baer said.

Cities linked to strengthening currencies, including the euro and Swiss franc, saw sharper increases in prices for high-end goods, while locations anchored to the US dollar benefited from more favourable cost structures for affluent expatriates and internationally mobile families.

Dubai’s dirham peg to the US dollar supported its relative position, the report said, helping protect purchasing power for residents amid global currency volatility.

The report highlighted Dubai’s competitiveness in high-value spending categories, noting that premium automobiles, jewellery and business-class travel remain attractively priced compared with peer cities globally.

Dubai’s prime real estate market also continues to offer relative value compared with higher-priced Asian and European wealth centres, while maintaining premium standards across areas such as five-star hospitality and Michelin-calibre dining, the report said.

Middle East wealth outlook

The report found strong optimism among Middle Eastern high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs), with a third reporting major wealth accumulation over the past year, more than double the proportion recorded among European counterparts.

It said 43 per cent of affluent Middle Eastern individuals were expanding their investments and lifestyle spending, exceeding levels seen in the Americas and Europe.

The report also highlighted the region’s focus on family wealth preservation, with 98 per cent of respondents living in larger family households. Six in ten HNWIs had addressed succession planning over the past year, while 65 per cent used family offices and 73 per cent had established formal family governance frameworks.

Rishabh Saksena, co-head of Global Asset Class Specialists at Julius Baer, said the GCC entered 2026 from a position of strength but had faced challenges from heightened geopolitical uncertainty affecting short-term growth prospects.

“Oxford Economics and ICAEW now forecast Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) GDP to contract by 0.2 per cent in 2026, against a previously projected 4.4 per cent expansion for the year, with a strong rebound of 8.5 per cent projected for 2027 as conditions normalise,” he said.

Saksena said the near-term pressure was concentrated in sectors exposed to confidence and connectivity, including tourism, hospitality, real estate and aviation.

“Governments across the Gulf have responded with targeted fiscal measures, while central banks moved to protect liquidity and maintain market stability, drawing on the deep fiscal buffers accumulated through years of deliberate economic reform,” he said.

GCC diversification and AI investment

The report said the GCC’s longer-term economic outlook was supported by structural transformation, with non-oil sectors now accounting for approximately 73 per cent of total GCC GDP.

Artificial intelligence has also become central to government economic strategies across the Gulf, with sovereign capital deployed through dedicated national vehicles and regional strategies, the report said.

AI is projected to contribute up to $320bn to the Middle East economy by 2030, according to the report.

Julius Baer said supportive residency frameworks and stronger regulatory policies would continue to attract capital flows, institutional investment and wealth migration to leading financial centres in the region.

The report also highlighted changing priorities among global affluent individuals, with demand for luxury experiences, high-end dining and travel remaining strong.

It said investments in personal wellbeing had increased, reflecting a growing focus on longevity, health and security as components of modern wealth.

Julius Baer said the report’s data collection ended in late February, while survey fieldwork concluded in early March, meaning the impact of the ongoing situation in the Middle East had not been reflected in the findings.