MUST-READS

• Rolls-Royce puts Middle East at center of five-year drive to quadruple profits

  With next-generation technology rolling out, the head of Rolls-Royce's operations in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (Meta) has said the markets of Middle East will be crucial in the company's overall plan of quadrupling profits by 2027.

  John Kelly, president of Meta at Rolls-Royce, told The National the “confluence of key market opportunities with phenomenal growth opportunities across all of our divisions” will be key to reaching its profit-swelling goal.

  Last year, Rolls-Royce chief executive Tufan Erginbilgic outlined his plan to quadruple profits over five years by improving the performance of its jet engines and bearing down on costs.

• Oil Holds Above $90 After Middle East Tensions Push Brent Higher

  Global benchmark Brent earlier pierced $91 a barrel, before trading little changed. The focus has shifted to a dramatic repricing of geopolitical risk, after Israel increased preparations for a potential retaliation by Tehran to a strike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria. That has stoked fears of a wider regional conflict.

• Pakistan PM Sharif to meet Saudi crown prince on Riyadh visit

  Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will meet the Saudi crown prince during a two-day visit to Riyadh that starts on Saturday, the foreign ministry said. The visit will be Sharif's first foreign trip since forming a coalition government in February. The two are longtime allies, with the South Asian nation often turning to Riyadh for financial help during its balance of payment crises. Since it averted a sovereign debt default last summer by securing a $3-billion IMF bailout, Pakistan has been in dire need of financial support from the multilateral lender and friendly countries.

• Chinese Tourists May Get Visa Waiver to Visit Saudi Arabia

  Saudi Arabia is planning to introduce more measures to help Chinese tourists visit the country, potentially including visa-free entry, Gloria Guevara, chief special advisor to the country’s tourism minister, told Caixin, as the oil-rich nation looks to capitalize on China’s booming tourism demand to support its economic transformation. “Everything is being analyzed,” Guevara said in an interview when asked whether the kingdom is considering offering some kind of visa waiver to Chinese visitors. “The Chinese market is very important for Saudi Arabia,” she said. The Middle East country received 100,000 Chinese visitors last year and aims to boost the figure to 5 million by 2030, she said.

• Trump Venues Bank on Golf, With Help From Saudi Arabia

  Amateur golfers lined up on Thursday at the Trump National Doral near Miami, having agreed to pay more than $9,000 apiece to play a friendly round alongside some of the world’s top professionals. Rooms at the resort hotel will fill up with fans as a pro tournament featuring some of the biggest names in the sport gets underway on Friday. The resort’s restaurants and bars will pull in more business, and the Trump name will be beamed around the world on television and the internet. Behind this surge in business at one of former President Donald J. Trump’s properties is his deal to host tournaments for LIV Golf, the upstart league sponsored by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

• Saudi Arabia to host women’s tennis WTA Finals for the next three years

  The season-ending Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Finals will be held in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh from 2024-2026, the tennis body said, ending months of speculation and marking the Gulf country’s latest foray into the sport. “To have a women’s tournament of this magnitude and profile is a defining moment for tennis in Saudi Arabia. The WTA Finals has the power to inspire far beyond the sport, especially for our young girls and women,” Saudi Minister of Sport Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Faisal Al Saud said on Thursday.

• Majority of recent CO2 emissions linked to just 57 producers, report says

  The vast majority of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions since 2016 can be traced to a group of 57 fossil fuel and cement producers, researchers said on Thursday. From 2016 to 2022, the 57 entities including nation-states, state-owned firms and investor-owned companies produced 80% of the world's CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement production, said the Carbon Majors report by non-profit think tank InfluenceMap.

• Israel-Gaza war updates: What is happening now, six months on?

  Six months since Hamas gunmen stormed into southern Israel on a killing spree, Israel's ground campaign to annihilate the Islamist movement has turned much of the Gaza Strip into a wasteland with an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe. Mediators have been trying to organise the first extended truce of the war to rush in aid to feed the Palestinian territory's 2.3 million people and secure the release of some of the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas.

• Chef Jose Andres says Israel targeted his aid workers ‘systematically, car by car’

  Celebrity chef Jose Andres told Reuters in an emotional interview on Wednesday that an Israeli attack that killed seven of his food aid workers in Gaza had targeted them "systematically, car by car." Speaking via video, Andres said the World Central Kitchen (WCK) charity group he founded had clear communication with the Israeli military, which he said knew his aid workers' movements. "This was not just a bad luck situation where ‘oops’ we dropped the bomb in the wrong place," Andres said.

• Dereliction of Duty: Israeli Blunders on the way to October 7

  Yet the fact that the Palestinian terrorist organization was able to do so was a direct result of Israel’s government and its defense apparatus’ dereliction of duty. The resulting war in the Middle East will likely continue for the foreseeable future, postponing a thorough Israeli investigation and delaying a public discussion of the worst disaster in the history of the state. For this reason, it is important to be candid in discussing those now.

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