The Agenda

Dubai bans families and single tenants from sharing a unit under tougher shared housing rules. What does it mean if you rent a room, and could you be forced to move?

KHDA wants to hear from parents stuck in school traffic. Why is it running a survey on the school commute?

Half term is here, and UAE staycation bookings are up nearly a third. Where is everyone heading, and are there last-minute bargains?

Abu Dhabi’s packed entertainment season adds Black Coffee and The Phantom of the Opera. Has international confidence returned?

Do cats make us happier? New research says countries with more cats are happier, with a strange twist involving a parasite.

And we meet the 16-year-old who is the youngest member of Dubai Police’s triathlon team.

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Abu Dhabi researchers have launched a new AI model designed to understand Emirati Arabic. We'll discuss why the UAE needs its own ChatGPT equivalent.

As global technology leaders gather in Abu Dhabi for AI Everything, the boss of French AI company Mistral says the UAE needs powerful AI systems under its own control to defend against cyber threats.

Thousands of robots will be roaming the streets of Abu Dhabi within months - that's one of the revelations from the event. We find out what they'll be doing and how soon you could see one.

We're also looking at the war for UAE talent. If you quit tomorrow, could your boss stop you going to work for their biggest rival? Top lawyers say employers are increasingly enforcing non-compete clauses. We find out why, and how much breaking one could cost you.

It's still months away, but we're already thinking about Christmas, because we're being warned it could cost more this year. We dig into a new global survey warning of double-digit cost increases across supply chains.

Meanwhile, Dubai is getting a colourful new look, with redesigned street signs and neighbourhood names. We find out why your house could soon be getting a number plate.

And scientists have discovered that butterflies may use the patterns on their wings to create optical illusions, confusing predators and helping them escape being eaten.

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The UAE has begun putting limits on how much salt, sugar and fat can go into some of the foods we eat every day. The new resolution covers packaged foods made in the UAE or imported, including by companies in free zones. It starts with bread, sweetened milk drinks, flavoured yoghurt and laban, salty snacks and processed cheese. The limits come down in stages until the end of 2030. On The Agenda, we get more details about the new resolution from Nouf Khamis Al Ali, Director of the Health Promotion Department, Ministry of Health and Prevention.

What does an AI-native city looks like?

If you have a pool in the UAE, you may have noticed the costs to keep it are rising. Why?

And some parents are posting their children's pictures in Facebook groups, asking strangers to remove the watermark, and photographers say that puts children at risk.

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Schools across the UAE are asking parents to rethink the way they take and share photos and videos on campus.

It’s not a ban on photographing your own child. Parents can still capture those important school moments. The concern is what happens when other children are unintentionally included in the frame and, more importantly, what happens to those images afterwards.

Abu Dhabi says it will be the world's first AI-native government by 2027, with more than 40 government entities working as one AI-driven system. For residents, that could mean fewer forms and faster answers. But when a machine makes the call on your application and gets it wrong, who answers for it?

Cheap flights from Europe to Abu Dhabi were meant to be back this month. But now Wizz Air says they won't start until January. 

With world food prices rising, do you know where your own money goes? One Dubai founder tracked her shop and found her grocery bill had jumped by about a quarter, with the same habits. So how do you spot it before it bites?

And how do you move a whole museum's worth of specimens? 

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World food prices rose again in September. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says its benchmark index averaged 136 points, up 1.5 percent on August and just under 6 percent on a year ago. So what does that mean for the weekly shop? 

The UAE is tightening up on late salaries. Under the latest Wage Protection System decision, employers will get alerts about delayed wages before the ministry takes any administrative action.  

His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, has attended the unveiling of the probe for the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt. In a post on X, Sheikh Hamdan said the spacecraft was developed, assembled and tested in the UAE. 

A venomous snake living in the UAE's mountains has been caught doing something that has never been recorded before.

And what if you could film in Paris, on Mars or in the middle of a storm without leaving Dubai? 

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The KHDA has sent parents across Dubai a new survey on the school commute, asking how children get to school, how long families spend stuck in traffic at the gates, and what would actually make it easier. One option's already being tested. 

We also speak to a Dubai student who created a platform aimed at getting more children sharing rides to school. 

Plus, how are school buses managing the school pick-up and drop-off process?  

UAE university enrolment has hit its highest level in a decade, more than 57,000 new students across 66 institutions, a 13 per cent jump on last year.  

Altair-1, the UAE's first commercial AI-enabled Earth observation satellite, launched on Wednesday evening from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9.  What does this milestone actually signal about where the UAE's space ambitions are heading? 

New data out from the Copernicus Climate Change Service shows Europe's summer was defined by extreme heat and drought. It was the continent's third warmest summer on record, and the warmest ever for western Europe, with 52 per cent of Europe exposed to dangerous heat stress by the end of the season.  

And we're heading north as Fujairah reopens its hiking and biking trails.

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Fuel prices in the UAE are up this October, and that explains the long queues at the pumps yesterday. 

From today, Super 98 costs AED4.40 a litre compared to AED3.80 in September, while Special 95 goes up from AED3.69 to AED4.28.  E-Plus 91 is now at Dh4.21, and diesel climbs to Dh4.80, the steepest monthly jump of the year.

So, how can we make fuel last a little longer?

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Etihad Rail's stations in Dubai and Al Dhaid, in Sharjah, open this morning, joining the Abu Dhabi to Fujairah route that launched at the end of June. From the Al Yalayis station, the journey to Abu Dhabi takes around 64 minutes, with tickets from AED 39 for standard class and AED 109 for premium.

So will people really swap the drive for the train? How will attractions and tourist spots benefit from these newly-opened stations?

Is mental health care becoming more accessible in the UAE?

And why has OpenAI scrapped the release of its next-generation model?

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Ahead of the official launch of Etihad Rail's station in Dubai, ARN's News Centre's Lujain Ammar got on the preview journey, departing Mohammed Bin Zayed City Station in Abu Dhabi and arriving at Al Yalayis Station in Dubai. She shares her experience of the journey, giving listeners a first look at the new rail service and what passengers can expect when the station officially opens.

Ajman has wrapped up its fourth Real Estate Investment Exhibition, and demand was high enough that organisers actually extended it by a day. It's given us a good look at where the emirate's heading, infrastructure, community building under Ajman 2030, and a real shift away from just building towers towards thinking about how people actually live there. 

Today is the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste. We speak with people who are finding innovative ways to keep food from going to waste, from rescuing surplus meals to extending the shelf life of fresh produce.

Researchers at NYU Abu Dhabi have found that a single cancer-causing gene doesn't always do the same thing to a cell. 

And looking for a home with a little history? Ras Al Khaimah's Al Qasimi Palace, famously known as the Haunted Palace, is up for sale for over AED 22 million.

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On our monthly Consumer Hour with the Dubai Corporation for Consumer Protection and Fair Trade (DCCPFT), we're looking at scams, specifically the ones designed to look completely legitimate. One of the most common right now is fake insurance offers, policies sold at a fraction of the normal price, sometimes even with official-looking documents, that turn out to be worthless the moment you actually need to make a claim. 

The government's been cracking down on fake Emiratisation, the Ministry of Human Resources & Emiratisation (MoHRE) uncovered 377 cases across 266 companies this year, businesses hiring Emirati nationals on paper without giving them real roles. So what does it look like when a company actually gets this right? 

Spain has had a brutal wildfire season, with more than 265,000 hectares of forest burnt by mid-August and 42 large fires recorded. Now a solar-powered aircraft from the UAE is helping keep watch. 

And why do dogs listen more to consonant sounds that vowels?

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