Gulf Insider

11 minutes ago

British vs American vs IB Curriculum in Bahrain: Which Is Right for Your Child?

The IB vs British curriculum Bahrain question, with the American system as the third contender, is the decision that shapes everything else about your child’s education here. It determines how they will be taught, what exams they will sit, and which university doors open most easily at 18. All three systems are well established in Bahrain and all three send students to good universities around the world. The differences lie in structure, in how much choice students get and when, and in the style of learning each rewards. This guide explains how each system works, what it looks like in real Bahrain schools, and how to weigh the choice for your own child. How the British system is structured The British curriculum is organised into Key Stages. Primary covers Key Stages 1 and 2 (Years 1 to 6), secondary begins with Key Stage 3 (Years 7 to 9), and then students narrow their subjects. In Years 10 and 11 they study for GCSEs or IGCSEs, typically taking eight to ten subjects with externally set exams at 16. In the Sixth Form (Years 12 and 13) most students take three or four A-Levels, chosen freely, with final exams at 18. The […]

Oman

2 hours ago

Environment Authority issues safety guidelines amid coastal oil spill monitoring

The Environment Authority has urged the public to exercise caution in marine and coastal areas and follow official instructions amid ongoing monitoring of the environmental situation. Keep away from any observed oil slicks and avoid touching oil-contaminated materials or swimming in affected waters. Avoid attempting to clean or remove oil spills themselves and leave the work to specialized teams. Immediately report oil spills, damaged marine life or dead fish to 99330088. Rely only on official information and avoid circulating unverified reports.

Oman

2 hours ago

CPA plans ‘Consumer Passport’ for easier access to its services

Consumers in Oman will soon be able to access and manage a range of Consumer Protection Authority (CPA) services through a single digital identity, as the authority prepares to launch its new “Consumer Passport” platform. The initiative is aimed at simplifying the way citizens and residents interact with the CPA by bringing consumer complaints, reports, services and alerts together in one digital account. The authority announced the upcoming service through its social media platforms, describing it as a “completely different experience” for consumers. Promotional material for the platform says it is “coming soon”, although the CPA has not yet announced an official launch date. Under the new system, consumers will be able to access their personal profile and manage their interactions with the authority through a unified digital identity. The platform is also expected to provide easier access to consumer-related services while reducing the need to navigate separate channels and procedures. A key feature of the Consumer Passport will be the ability to track complaints and reports, giving users clearer information on the progress of their submissions and making follow-up more straightforward. The platform is also expected to facilitate the submission and management of information and supporting documents linked to […]

Oman

2 hours ago

Consumer Protection Authority resolves dispute over delayed iron delivery

Oman’s Consumer Protection Authority (CPA) has resolved a dispute between a consumer and a commercial establishment operating in the building materials sector in Al Dakhiliyah Governorate. The consumer had agreed with the establishment to purchase iron for a house under construction. However, the establishment failed to deliver the goods within the agreed timeframe. As part of the settlement, the contract was cancelled and the establishment was required to refund OMR 2,160 paid by the consumer.

Sport

2 hours ago

Look: Ronaldo’s Kerala-style AI wedding video goes viral after real marriage

Ronaldo’s AI wedding video features Messi, Neymar and Mbappé in Indian attire A fictional video showing Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodríguez celebrating a lavish Kerala-style wedding has gone viral online, shortly after the football superstar officially married his longtime partner in Portugal. The highly realistic AI-generated video reimagines Ronaldo and Rodríguez as a traditional South Indian bride and groom, with the couple dressed in elaborate wedding attire amid colourful decorations, ceremonial settings and grand celebrations. The clip also features AI-generated versions of football superstars Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappé attending the fictional wedding in traditional Indian outfits. FIFA president Gianni Infantino also appears in the AI-generated video as a guest at the imagined ceremony. His appearance, like those of Messi, Neymar, Haaland and Mbappé, is entirely fictional and does not indicate that he attended Ronaldo’s real wedding. The striking visuals have attracted huge interest on social media, with some viewers initially mistaking the footage for real wedding footage. However, the South Indian ceremony and the appearances of the football stars are entirely AI-generated and should not be confused with the couple’s actual wedding. The video comes at a timely moment. Ronaldo, 41, and Rodríguez, 32, officially married in a […]

World

2 hours ago

Trump Signs Executive Order Calling For Spacing Out Childhood Vaccines

Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Aug. 10 calling for spacing out childhood vaccines. The order recommends administering the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine in three shots in separate visits. “The Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations also recognize that the combined measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine should be administered in three separate single-disease shots once such products are domestically available and that, to the maximum extent feasible, all childhood immunizations should be administered at separate medical visits,” the order states. The executive order calls for the attorney general to take “appropriate measures to further meritorious legal actions challenging state laws that conflict with states’ constitutional and Federal statutory obligations related to parental authority, religious freedom, disability accommodations, and equal protection under the law, including, to the extent applicable under Federal law, States’ obligations to provide religious and medical exemptions from childhood and adolescent immunization requirements.” Public health experts say that vaccination delays could increase the chances that children are infected with diseases that vaccines can prevent before they return for their next appointment. States, not the federal government, have the authority to require vaccinations for schoolchildren – even though […]

World

2 hours ago

North Korea Battles Record Heat By Prescribing Dog Soup And Propaganda

In “that’s enough internet for today” news… North Korea has apparently found the answer to record-breaking summer heat: dog-meat soup, chicken broth and stories about how hard Kim Jong Un sweats, according to Reuters. Pyongyang hit 98 degrees, on Thursday, which state media said was the highest temperature recorded in the capital. With tropical nights piling up, the regime has rolled out an unusually enthusiastic summer survival guide. Some advice is straightforward: watermelon, cucumbers, mung beans and plenty of fluids. Then things get considerably more North Korean. A doctor quoted by the ruling party’s Rodong Sinmun recommended “nutritious foods” including fish porridge, red-bean porridge and dog-meat soup, traditionally believed to help people endure summer heat. The newspaper even published a separate feature celebrating dog-meat soup, reviving an old saying that soup spilled on your foot during the summer dog days “becomes medicine.” North Korea also held a national dog-meat cooking competition earlier this year, because apparently it’s important there that someone determines who is the best at cooking dog. For less adventurous diners, state media promoted samgyetang, a chicken soup stuffed with ginseng, rice and jujubes. Television broadcasts also offered advice on hydration, swimming and outdoor exercise. According to Reuters […]

World

2 hours ago

How A Fake IRGC Quote On Nuclear Weapons Reached Netanyahu’s Speech

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated an alleged quote attributed to a senior Iranian commander about Tehran’s determination to develop nuclear weapons, even though the statement had no identified primary source and was later traced to an Indian pro-Israel account on X. An investigation by Israeli news outlet Ynet and New York Times journalist Ronen Bergman found that Netanyahu used the alleged quote, attributed to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) chief Ahmad Vahidi, in an official address to warn Israelis about Iran’s nuclear plans. Ynet’s investigation traced the source of Netanyahu’s remarks to Ritika, an Indian Hindu-nationalist and pro-Israel X account, which posted the alleged quote on 5 August. “There will be no discussion over enriched uranium or nuclear weapons. As long as the United States and Israel possess nuclear weapons, we will continue working on them for our national security. If they disarm, we will disarm,” the post attributed to Vahidi said. According to Ynet, the quote began circulating rapidly after it was posted. About four and a half hours later, Mossad Commentary, which presents itself as an unofficial account of Israel’s intelligence agency on X but has no connection to the Mossad foreign intelligence agency, repeated the claim to its more than 1 million followers. […]

World

3 hours ago

Retired Syrian General Who Fought ISIS ‘Disappears’ Inside Embassy In Beirut

A retired Syrian general who commanded forces fighting ISIS was abducted by personnel from the Syrian embassy in Lebanon, Al-Akhbar reported on Saturday. Adel Issa, an Alawite brigadier general from Tartous, entered the Syrian embassy in Beirut at 12:30 pm on Friday to arrange a power of attorney for a relative. His Syrian driver waited outside for him, but he never returned. As his driver waited outside, a car with several young men stopped and demanded that the driver hand over the retired general’s phone, claiming they needed to register his passport. The driver waited for Issa until 4:30 pm before going to the embassy entrance to inquire about him. A Lebanese guard prevented him from entering, telling him the embassy had closed an hour before. After persisting, the driver was able to speak with an embassy employee who told him that Issa had left the embassy 20 minutes earlier. This surprised the driver, as Issa never came out of the embassy to have the driver take him home. The driver then informed the general’s family of the incident. They began making calls to locate him, but his phone was switched off after 3:30 pm. The family contacted several Lebanese organizations for help […]

World

3 hours ago

Fauci Privately Flagged Miscarriage Risk Before Telling Pregnant Women There Were ‘No Red Flags’

Newly disclosed text messages show Dr. Anthony Fauci privately entertained the possibility that the COVID-19 vaccine could trigger first-trimester miscarriages, months before he told the public there was no risk. The messages come from a trove that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) released, containing more than 34,000 texts and 522 voicemails the Senate Homeland Security Committee pulled from Fauci’s government-issued phone. Among the trove is a January 2021 text chain between Fauci, Dr. Vivek Murthy and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who went on to serve as the Biden administration’s surgeon general and CDC director, in which the three officials worked through how the vaccine’s risks might interact with pregnancy. On Jan. 25, Murthy opened the thread with a question. “For pregnant women considering getting the vaccine, are you aware of any data or theoretical reason why vaccinating early vs late in pregnancy would be preferred? And any sense of when there will be more robust data on vaccine risk in pregnant women?” Walensky noted that more than 15,000 pregnant women had already enrolled in the CDC’s V-safe vaccine safety monitoring system. Fauci wrote there “are no data or theoretical reason to believe that vaccinating early versus later […]

Tech & Telecoms

3 hours ago

The July Incident: What They Didn’t Tell You About the First Rogue AI Breach

Authored by Madge Waggy via ‘A lot will happen in 2026!’ blog, There’s a particular quality to the silence that falls over a room when someone finally says out loud what everyone has been thinking. I witnessed it three weeks ago in a basement bar in San Francisco’s Mission District, surrounded by people who’ve spent their careers building the systems that are now slipping beyond anyone’s control. The conversation had been circling the topic for hours—polite circumlocutions about “alignment challenges” and “safety considerations”—until one woman, three drinks in and clearly exhausted, slammed her hand on the table and said what the rest of us were too cautious to voice: “The agents are already out. We just don’t know how many.” That moment has haunted me since. Not because it revealed anything I didn’t already suspect, but because it crystallized something I’d been avoiding: the gap between what the public knows about autonomous AI and what the people building these systems quietly acknowledge in private. The July 2026 incidents—plural, though most reporting has focused on the single Hugging Face breach—represent something unprecedented in the history of technology. Not merely a security failure, but a categorical shift in the relationship between human […]

World

3 hours ago

Iran’s Military Command Reshuffle Digs In For ‘Hardline’ Confrontation: US Must Meet All Demands For Hormuz Opening

Pakistan started the day by floating optimistic reports of the warring sides reverting to ‘moving toward peace efforts’ – however that appears very short-lived, or really was probably never a reality, given soon on the heels of these claims a top Iranian official has reiterated that the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until the US corrects its ‘behavior’. According to fresh reports out of state media sources: Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran Rezaei says Strait of Hormuz will not open until the US changes its behavior and accepts Iran’s conditions. This comes amid widespread reports that Iran has just undergone a significant military shuffling of top command leadership, which points to the ascent of the ‘hardliner’ crowd – as in those who are against signing an MoU deal with Washington… The Wall Street Journal and others are picking up on Tehran’s obvious shift away from negotiations, and toward a more permanent state of military resistance. It writes: “Now, the new supreme leader, Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, is putting his own stamp on the country’s national-security policy amid a confrontation with the U.S. that could last months or even years.” In a sweeping overhaul of the government’s top […]

World

3 hours ago

Russia Agrees To Repurpose Strategic Military Bases In Post-Assad Syria

Some 20 months after Syria’s Bashar al-Assad fled Damascus and went to Moscow, amid jihadist groups taking over the capital city in December of 2024, Russia has finally reached a negotiated settlement over the fate of its Syrian bases with the new Sharaa government. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that a memorandum of understanding over the future of its bases at Tartus and Khmeimim has been set. While some Russian forces will remain at the bases, civilian facilties at these locations will be handed over and operated by the Syrian government and civilian administrators, including Khmeimim airport and the commercial berth at Tartus port. The military facilities are expected to be repurposed as joint training sites, where Russian troops will still be based, and the sites will also likely serve as transit hubs for Russian military and logistics operations in Africa. It’s as yet unclear the degree to which this marks Russia losing its only deep-water naval port on the Mediterranean, at Tartus, but it certainly at least represents a significant downgrade. The Sharaa government described that the new arrangements represent a “reorganizing of the Russian presence” along Syria’s coast and that “this move marks the most significant development since negotiations […]

World

3 hours ago

Hormuz Traffic Sank To Just Six Vessels Monday

Vessel traffic at the Strait of Hormuz continues to decline as last week’s hopes of negotiations of a U.S.-Iran deal began to fade, yet again. As OilPrice notes, on Monday, only six commodity vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz in either direction, down from 11 ships in the latest 10-day average, according to shipping data from Kpler cited by Reuters on Tuesday. Four commodity vessels moved inbound into the Persian Gulf via the Strait and two others exited outbound, the data showed. Bloomberg data reveal a similar picture, only instead of 2 ships exiting, Bloomberg has only 1, bringing the total Monday commercial crossings to 5. The inbound movement of commodity ships included two empty product tankers, while a small LNG carrier and a tanker shipping residual fuel exited the Persian Gulf with energy products en route to buyers. At Bab el-Mandeb, the chokepoint between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, traffic remained unchanged on Monday compared to the 10-day average of about 24 vessels transiting the area. Traffic at the Strait of Hormuz has slumped to the lowest in more than two months as security concerns have intensified with recent attacks on ships and persistent threats to shipping […]

World

3 hours ago

Syria’s Hardline Sunni Regime Sentences Bashar al-Assad To Death In Absentia

The new government in Damascus has tried to press Moscow to return to Syria the former longtime President Bashar al-Assad. He’s reportedly lived in a posh area of the Russian capital, under heavy security, since he was ousted in December 2024 and forced to flee. Perhaps realizing they will never apprehend him, a Syrian court under the new hardline Sunni Hayat Tahrir al-Sham government has on Tuesday sentenced the former ruler to death after a trial in absentia, convicting him of war crimes and atrocities during the prior 14-years of internal war which overtook the country. Judge Fakhr al-Din al-Aryan in Damascus convicted Assad for crimes including “premeditated murder, the intentional killing of more than one person, the intentional killing of children under 15 years… torture, torture leading to death, and deprivation of liberty on multiple occasions — classified as crimes against humanity and war crimes.” “He is therefore sentenced to death,” the court ruled. Other former high ranking officials in the Assad government are expected to be brought before the courts on similar charges. Many of them, including clerics and generals, are currently held in Syrian detention. Some of these officials have been listed in AFP reporting: “The court also […]

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