January 16, 2026

US Cuts Taiwanese Tariffs to 15% and Boosts $250bn Semiconductor Investment

The US slashes tariffs on goods from Taiwan to 15% in a new deal. Taiwanese firms pledge $250 billion for semiconductor and AI projects in America. This move aims to reshape the US chip sector and boost local production.

January 16, 2026

Democrats Demand FTC Probe Into Trump Mobile Over Delayed T1 Phone and Refund Concerns

Democratic lawmakers have asked the FTC to investigate Trump Mobile after hundreds of thousands paid deposits for the delayed T1 phone. The phone promised US-made features but remains undelivered, raising fraud concerns.

January 15, 2026

Dubai Upgrades Burj Khalifa Metro Station to Handle Soaring Ridership

Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority, with Emaar, starts a big upgrade of the busy Burj Khalifa/Dubai Mall Metro Station. The move will ease crowds, add more entry gates, and improve escalators for smooth travel as ridership hits record highs.

January 15, 2026

Australia Blocks 4.7 Million Under-16 Social Media Accounts After December Ban

Australia banned social media for users under 16 in December. Over 4.7 million accounts were removed or restricted in days. Meta deactivated nearly 550,000 accounts. The government says platforms are trying to comply, but opposition raises concerns over age checks and account reactivations.

January 15, 2026

Abu Dhabi’s Falcon-H1 Arabic AI Tops Global Arabic Language Benchmarks

Abu Dhabi’s Technology Innovation Institute has launched Falcon-H1 Arabic, a new AI model built specifically for Arabic. The 34-billion-parameter model leads the Open Arabic LLM Leaderboard, beating even larger global AI models like Meta’s Llama-3.3 and Alibaba’s Qwen2.5 on Arabic comprehension and dialect tasks.