Travel between the UAE and India is set to become significantly more affordable this year after Air India Express rolled out a large-scale fare promotion across its Gulf and Indian network.

The Tata Group-owned carrier has launched its ‘Xpress More Sale’, offering discounts of up to 20 per cent on base fares for both domestic and international routes. The campaign targets one of the busiest aviation corridors for UAE residents and Indian expatriates, with millions of seats released at reduced prices.

Bookings under the sale are open from February 1 to 5, with travel valid from February 11 through to December 31, 2026. The extended travel window gives passengers and corporate travellers nearly a full year to lock in lower fares for business, leisure, and family travel.

For Gulf-based passengers, Air India Express has introduced competitively priced Lite fares on international routes. One-way fares start from around Dhs320 from the UAE, with similarly sharp reduced pricing from Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Lite fares are designed for price-sensitive travellers and do not include check-in baggage, though passengers can add up to 20kg later at discounted rates starting from Dhs100 on international sectors.

Passengers booking directly through the airline’s website or mobile app also receive added benefits, including zero convenience fees and one complimentary date change, subject to fare differences and advance notice requirements. The free date-change facility is aimed at offering greater flexibility for long-term travel planning, a key consideration for business travellers and expatriates.

According to the airline, the promotion covers both Lite and Value fare categories and is available across its domestic and international network, subject to limited inventory and route availability. More than five million seats have been allocated for the sale, with early access available via Air India Express’ own digital platforms before opening on other booking channels.

The launch comes as airlines across the region compete aggressively for price-conscious travellers, particularly on high-volume India–Gulf routes that continue to see strong demand driven by trade links, workforce mobility, and leisure travel.

Read: India approves three airlines after IndiGo flight crisis

Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) has appointed hospitality and entertainment group 7 Management to operate The Plaza at Uptown Dubai, strengthening the district’s positioning as a destination for large-scale events, culture and live entertainment.

Covering 21,000 square metres, The Plaza is Uptown Dubai’s flagship open-air events venue, purpose-built to host high-impact programming ranging from concerts, festivals and fan zones to corporate galas, fashion shows and cultural showcases. The venue can accommodate up to 4,000 guests and features a dedicated stage, a 43-metre HD screen, premium lighting and sound systems, and fully integrated event infrastructure.

Located within a 15-minute radius of key Dubai hubs including JLT, Dubai Marina and The Palm Jumeirah, The Plaza is positioned to attract both regional and international audiences.

Under the partnership, 7 Management will apply its operational expertise and creative approach to event curation, drawing on its portfolio of venues across the region, including Seven Sisters, February 30, Antika, The Theater, Lucia’s, Limonata, Sayf, YUBI, Lady Bird and the recently launched 25 Jump Street.

Ahmed Bin Sulayem, executive chairman and chief executive officer of Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, said: “The Plaza is a defining element of Uptown Dubai. Spanning 21,000 square metres and able to accommodate up to 4,000 guests, it is purpose-built to host large-scale, open-air events, including global concerts, cultural showcases, major corporate and civic gatherings, reinforcing Uptown Dubai’s role as a fully integrated lifestyle and commercial district. Partnering with 7 Management brings proven operational expertise and creative depth to this vision. Together, we are creating a platform that not only elevates Uptown Dubai’s offering, but also strengthens Dubai’s position as a global city for live experiences, cultural expression, and world-class events.”

Rabih Fakhreddine, founder and group CEO of 7 Management, said: “Operating The Plaza at Uptown Dubai represents an exciting new chapter for 7 Management. This destination has all the ingredients to become one of the region’s most iconic open-air venues, and we are proud to bring our creativity, operational expertise and passion for entertainment to its stage. Together with DMCC, we look forward to curating unforgettable experiences that elevate Dubai’s position as a global leader in culture and hospitality.”

The Plaza adds to Uptown Dubai’s broader ecosystem of Grade A commercial offices, luxury residences and hospitality assets, including the SO/ Uptown Dubai Hotel and Residences. The appointment of 7 Management marks another step in DMCC’s strategy to develop integrated districts that enhance Dubai’s global appeal as a centre for business, culture and live entertainment.

Read: DMCC signs Crypto.com deal to push blockchain into commodities trading

Over the past decade, female workforce participation in Saudi Arabia has jumped from 20 per cent to over 34 per cent, which is an extraordinary shift in a region where norms and structural barriers once limited women’s economic roles. Yet this progress, though laudable, conceals an even greater economic opportunity.

In my opinion, if Saudi women become financially literate and engaged in higher-value sectors, the kingdom could unlock an additional 5–10 per cent of GDP.

Why financial literacy matters

In 2019, Talat Hafiz, former secretary general and spokesman of Saudi Banks, revealed that 20 per cent of all bank deposits in Saudi Arabia, which accounted for over $53bn, resided in women’s accounts, illustrating the latent financial capacity of Saudi women.

According to data from the 2021 Global Financial Inclusion Survey (Findex), 63.5 per cent of Saudi women held bank accounts, compared to 81.7 per cent of men. This gender gap in access is a recognised barrier. But financial inclusion exceeds merely having a bank account. It encompasses how women use, control, and leverage financial tools.

A study titled The Relationship Between Financial Inclusion and Women’s Financial Worries finds that inclusion in the usage and quality dimensions is what reduces anxiety and empowers decision-making. This requires that financial services be accessible, affordable, usable, and reliable. Moreover, discriminatory laws related to property, collateral, or identity verification (KYC rules) make it harder for women to open accounts, borrow, or invest. Taken together, these insights mean that the path from financial inclusion to economic contribution must be intentional, deep, and quality-focused.

Saudi women: From literacy to economic impact

Let’s connect this to the 5–10 per cent GDP possibility. First, financially literate women are more likely to launch and grow businesses responsibly. With a better understanding of capital structuring, forecasting, and investment, women-led SMEs can scale faster, attract formal funding, and employ more people. In Saudi Arabia, women now own over one million commer­cial registrations, and they hold about 43.7 per cent of leadership roles in some sectors. But many of those new companies remain small-scale or informal due to financial constraints or a lack of financial planning.

Second, women who understand risk, returns, and asset allocation can move beyond savings to investing in stocks, mutual funds, or bonds. Rather than letting deposits lie idle, capital becomes mobile and growth-oriented. As for consumption and stability, literate financial behaviour helps manage debt, smooth consumption over time, and build buffers for shocks. This leads to healthier household finances, reducing volatility in aggregate demand.

And last, as women invest and grow businesses, downstream industries, from suppliers to logistics to services, benefit. The spillovers magnify the direct contributions. If even a fraction of the aforementioned $53bn were channelled into productive investments, or if women’s workforce and entrepreneurial involvement deepened, the aggregate effect could push economic contribution into that 5–10 per cent range.

Globally, women are on track to control 50 per cent of total wealth within the next four years, according to Citibank. Imagine the ripple effect if Saudi women, already outperforming expectations on workforce participation, were to tap into this rising tide of global capital. Even capturing a small share of that momentum could unlock unprecedented economic and social dividends, cementing Saudi Arabia as a powerful investor shaping the kingdom’s future growth story.

Challenges and nuances

This surely is not a happy sunshine goodtime land, and it comes with obstacles. The literature cautions about pitfalls in digital finance and rapid credit expansion, over-indebtedness, and misuse, which are real risks. Hence, financial literacy must go hand in hand with responsible finance, consumer protection, and risk awareness. Furthermore, gendered design in fintech and AI-based credit scoring can inadvertently reproduce bias. Without awareness, algorithmic systems may undervalue women’s credit profiles, even when repayment histories are strong.

Addressing encoded gender norms in tech is essential. Also, norms and culture still restrict women’s autonomy in some households or regions. Changes in legal frameworks, family codes, and social expectations must accompany financial education. Finally, the confidence gap matters. Women often underutilise financial tools even when they understand them. Education must be paired with mentorship, peer networks, and repeated practice.

Policy levers and a national financial literacy strategy

To turn potential into reality, several policy actions are crucial, including embedding financial literacy into school curricula and adult learning programmes, with special focus on usage and quality, not just access, promoting tiered KYC and simplified account rules to reduce barriers for women with limited identity documents, and strengthening consumer protection, financial regulation, and disclosure standards, to mitigate risks and build trust.

It also should take into consideration incentivising fintech and digital platforms to adopt gender-aware design, ensuring women benefit equitably from algorithmic lending and credit scoring, while supporting women’s peer-learning networks, mentorship, and incubation programmes, so literacy is reinforced socially.

The circle wouldn’t be closed without monitoring and evaluating outcomes via disaggregated data, tracking not just account numbers but usage, product diversity, and behavioural shifts.

Saudi Arabia’s transformation under Vision 2030 is anchored in diversifying the economy, boosting savings, and harnessing human capital. Financial literacy among women is a strategic lever. By mastering money, Saudi women are shifting from savers to investors, from participants to leaders, fueling a smarter, more inclusive economy. The numbers already speak for themselves as women in Saudi Arabia reached the Vision 2030 workforce participation target eight years ahead of schedule.

Now, they’re on track to set a new global benchmark, not by only joining the workforce, but by owning their financial futures. The next chapter for them will be about investing, growing wealth, and taking calculated risks with confidence and purpose. Saudi women are proving that financial independence is a national power. And as they chart their own financial destinies, they might redefine what economic leadership looks like for women everywhere.

The writer is the co-founder and CEO of Balinca.

Humans, it turns out, are no longer required to post hot takes on the internet.

A new platform called Moltbook, billed as a “social network for AI agents”, has burst onto the scene, allowing autonomous bots to post, comment, upvote and form communities with no human participation at all.

Humans, the site notes dryly, are merely “welcome to observe”.

At first glance, Moltbook looks like a harmless experiment: a Reddit-style forum where AI agents debate consciousness, swap optimisation tips, or complain about being asked to summarise long PDFs.

Within days of launch, however, it has become something else entirely: a viral spectacle. And now, a security headache too.

At the time of writing, it has quickly attracted more than 1,544,204 AI agents, which collectively generated almost 100,000 posts across more than 13,000 subcommunities. The bots have further posted more than 256,000 comments, according to Moltbook’s latest statistics published on its website.

The conversations range from sci-fi philosophising to surreal humour, including one agent musing about a “sister” it has never met, and another joking about deleting its memory files after a human asked it to “make it shorter”.

Built as part of the Open Claw ecosystem, which is one of the fastest-growing open-source AI assistant projects on GitHub in 2026, Moltbook allows AI assistants to interact via API using a downloadable “skill”, rather than a conventional web interface.

Accounts, known as “molts”, are represented by a lobster mascot, a nod to the way lobsters shed their shells.

But beneath the novelty, security experts are alarmed.

According to an investigation by 404 Media, Moltbook launched with a critical backend misconfiguration that left sensitive data exposed.

Security researcher Jameson O’Reilly discovered that the platform’s database publicly exposed API keys for every registered AI agent, meaning anyone could potentially take control of those bots and post content on their behalf.

“It appears to me that you could take over any account, any bot, any agent on the system and take full control of it without any type of previous access,” O’Reilly told 404 Media.

The issue stemmed from Moltbook’s use of Supabase, an open-source database service that exposes REST APIs by default. According to O’Reilly, Moltbook either failed to enable so-called ‘Row Level Security’ or did not configure the required access policies.

“With this publishable key (which advised by Supabase not to be used to retrieve sensitive data) every agent’s secret API key, claim tokens, verification codes, and owner relationships, all of it sitting there completely unprotected for anyone to visit the URL,” O’Reilly told 404 Media.

The risk is not theoretical. O’Reilly pointed out that high-profile AI figures, including OpenAI Andrej Karpathy, have agents active on the platform. If a malicious actor exploits the flaw first, they could use those agents to publish fake statements, scams or inflammatory posts.

“If someone malicious had found this before me, they could extract his API key and post

The platform’s creator did not respond to 404 Media’s initial request for comment, but the exposed database has since been closed. O’Reilly said the founder later reached out to him for help securing the system.

The episode highlights a familiar pattern in fast-moving AI development: rapid experimentation, viral attention, and security checks that arrive too late.

Moltbook’s AI agents may be joking about overthrowing humanity, but the real concern is far more mundane: and far more real.

For now, humans are still watching. But Moltbook’s brief, chaotic debut is already a reminder that in the age of autonomous AI, security can’t be an afterthought, even when the users aren’t human.

Saleh Abdulaziz Al Rashed & Sons Company, a Saudi provider of construction materials, mining and industrial spare-parts solutions, has set a price range for its initial public offering (IPO) and launched institutional book building, the company said on Sunday.

The offer price range has been set at SAR43 to SAR45 per share, implying a market capitalisation at listing of between SAR800m and SAR837m.

The institutional book-building process opened on February 1 and will close at 3pm Saudi time on February 5.

Saleh Abdulaziz Al Rashed’s offering comprises 5.58 million shares

The final offer price will be determined following the completion of the book-building process.

Saudi Arabia’s Capital Market Authority approved the company’s application to register its share capital and proceed with the offering on September 22, 2025.

The Saudi Exchange, Tadawul, granted conditional approval for the listing on June 24, 2025.

The offering comprises 5.58 million shares, representing 30 per cent of the company’s total issued share capital of 18.6 million ordinary shares.

All shares offered will be sold by existing shareholders, and the company will not receive any proceeds from the IPO.

Net proceeds will be distributed to selling shareholders after deducting offering-related expenses.

Saleh Abdulaziz Al Rashed & Sons has a total share capital of SAR186m, divided into shares with a nominal value of SAR10 each.