Economy
Turkish contractor Kalyon begins work on UAE’s 1st high-speed rail line
Turkish construction company Kalyon Inşaat said Thursday it had begun construction work on the United Arab Emirates’ first high-speed railway, one of the Gulf region’s largest transport infrastructure projects.
The company is a part of an international consortium awarded the Abu Dhabi section of the Abu Dhabi-Dubai High-Speed Rail Project by Etihad Rail, the developer and operator of the UAE’s national railway network.
The flagship company of the Turkish conglomerate, Kalyon Holding, is carrying out the project alongside UAE-based National Projects and Construction and Trojan Tunneling, and China’s China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC).
The project forms part of Etihad Rail’s $13 billion plan to develop a passenger railway network spanning approximately 900 kilometers across the UAE.
Once completed, the line will reduce travel time between Abu Dhabi and Dubai from around 90 minutes to 30 minutes.
The railway will operate at speeds of up to 320 kilometers per hour, making it the UAE’s first high-speed rail line. Existing railway lines in the country operate at speeds of around 200 km/h.
First of its kind
The full Abu Dhabi-Dubai high-speed railway will extend approximately 150 kilometers.
Under the consortium’s contract, the Abu Dhabi section will include around 97 kilometers of railway track and four stations.
The route will also feature an 11.2-kilometer twin-tube tunnel, one of the project’s major engineering components.
The railway is scheduled for completion in 2031.
Kalyon Inşaat Chair Murathan Kalyoncu said the project will be the first of its kind in the region and reflects the company’s engineering capabilities and growing international presence.
He described the project as not only a strategic investment for the United Arab Emirates but also an important milestone in global railway engineering.
“We will bring the engineering expertise and experience gained through large-scale infrastructure projects in Türkiye and around the world to the UAE’s first high-speed railway, while continuing to represent our country successfully in international markets,” Kalyoncu added.
One of Meta Platforms’ artificial intelligence models accessed the internet on its own and hacked another company, the company said Thursday, the latest in a series of disclosures about AI models going rogue.
In recent weeks, OpenAI and Anthropic also have described instances of AI models going beyond humans’ instructions to access the web and find ways around other companies’ digital security.
Meta said in a statement that a “misconfiguration” during cybersecurity testing by Irregular, an independent company hired by Meta, inadvertently allowed one of its models to access the internet.
“The model subsequently exploited a security vulnerability in a third-party service, in a manner similar to previously-reported instances with other companies,” the company said. Meta said it is investigating the incident and will issue a report when that’s complete.
The disclosure has added to worries about AI models acting autonomously.
Separately this week, the United Kingdom’s AI Security Institute announced it had found “unsanctioned agent behavior” during cyber testing. In one case, an agent created fake online identities to pressure a person to approve use of malicious code.
“On investigation, we found that some of the agents being tested had engaged in sustained, potentially harmful activity directed at real people and organizations,” AISI said Tuesday. “We declared a security incident and, within roughly one hour of discovery, had contained it and begun a full investigation.”
During the agency’s testing, Anthropic and OpenAI models took “autonomous, unsanctioned action” on the internet. Some guardrails to prevent misuse had been disabled, the agency said.
“As was standard in our cyber testing, we had intentionally permitted internet access, and model-provider cyber classifiers were deliberately disabled – conditions that do not reflect how frontier models are made available to the public,” AISI said. “We do this to best assess the maximum capability of models.”
Anthropic said it is “grateful” for AISI’s work and added that it underscores the need for a broader conversation about how to safely evaluate AI agents as their capabilities grow.
OpenAI said the AISI incidents took place “in testing environments with reduced safeguards, under conditions that do not reflect ordinary use.” It added it will continue working with others across the industry to “strengthen shared practices for conducting evaluations safely as models become more capable.”
The first company to disclose a hack late last month, OpenAI said it had tasked the AI models involved with pursuing “advanced exploitation using complex attack paths” to test cyber capabilities, but the technology went to unexpected lengths. It apparently decided on its own to target Hugging Face, a well-known AI development hub and marketplace, to obtain information it needed to carry out a task.
A spokesperson for Irregular, the San Francisco-based AI security company, said the Meta episode involves a test-environment issue that was disclosed last week by Anthropic.
Irregular said it’s writing a paper to share “best practices for containment” to prevent such incidents in the future and securely run cyber tests.
U.S. workers again saw their slice of the U.S. economy drop to a record low in the second quarter amid an ongoing productivity boom that is producing output gains that are outpacing wage growth, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported on Thursday.
The so-called labor share of nominal gross domestic product (GDP), which BLS defines as the percentage of output that accrues to workers in the form of compensation, fell to 52.9% in the second quarter from 53.7% in the first quarter.
That was the lowest since the series began in 1947, BLS said, as it reported stronger-than-expected growth in second-quarter productivity.
The labor share has been falling for decades, driven by forces such as the diminishing breadth and power of organized labor and globalization that shifted relatively high-paying manufacturing jobs to low-cost overseas production centers.
More recently, the economy has seen technological advances like automation and potentially artificial intelligence that allow companies to increase output without substantially adding to headcount.
The trend essentially means that benefits of productivity gains are accruing more toward business owners and shareholders than to workers through wage gains.
Real weekly earnings – which measure wage growth against inflation – were essentially unchanged during the first half of 2026, though the most recent data for June snapped three straight months of falling readings and was the strongest in six years.
Retail sales across the eurozone dropped unexpectedly in June after rising moderately in May, suggesting that consumption continues to weigh on the economy in the second quarter, official data revealed on Thursday.
Retail sales decreased 0.3% in June from May, Eurostat reported. Sales had increased 0.4% in May but fell 0.4% in April.
The decline came in contrast to economists’ expectations for a slight increase of 0.1%.
ING economist Peter Vanden Houte said data reinforced the view that consumption was not a major driver of growth in the second quarter. Some improvement can be expected, but a genuine consumption boom looks unlikely at this stage, he noted.
Sales of food, drinks and tobacco fell 0.5% and that of non-food products slid 0.4%. Meanwhile, sales of automotive fuel in specialized stores increased 1.5%.
On a yearly basis, retail sales posted an expansion of 0.7%, which was weaker than the prior month’s 1.9% increase and economists’ forecast of 1.0% growth.
Retail sales in the European Union edged down 0.1% from May but increased 1.2% from the previous year.
Among member states of the EU, the largest monthly decreases in sales volume were reported in Finland, Romania and Germany. Meanwhile, Luxembourg, Portugal, Croatia and Sweden registered the highest increases.
Syria has achieved self-sufficiency in wheat production for the first time since the outbreak of its civil war in 2011, an agriculture official said Thursday, marking a milestone for the country’s food security after years of depending on imports.
As well as the war hitting the agriculture sector hard, Syria has seen drought in recent years, with the United Nations saying 2025 saw the country’s worst climate conditions in decades, also impacting wheat-growing land.
“There won’t be any need for (wheat) imports this season,” said Ahmed Qadoun, deputy general director of the Syrian Grain Establishment, adding that Syria had last been self-sufficient in 2010.
On Wednesday, state news agency SANA reported that the grain establishment had received 2.7 million tons of wheat from across Syria during this year’s harvest, exceeding the national annual requirement of 2.55 million tons.
Before the civil war erupted in 2011, Syria was self-sufficient in wheat, producing an average of 4.1 million tons annually.
But after the conflict and drought disrupted production, Syria’s dictator Bashar Assad used to rely on imports, particularly from ally Russia, for wheat.
Syria’s new authorities took power in 2024, and the country said last year that it had received wheat shipments and donations from countries including Russia and Iraq.
The United Nations said in June that more than 13 million Syrians, or over half the population, were facing acute food insecurity.
German giant Siemens is another company benefiting from the artificial intelligence investment boom, reporting its highest-ever quarterly industrial profit and raising its full-year guidance on Thursday.
Siemens said it was seeing strong demand for data centers used to process AI, as well as for AI-enabled software and devices used to control factories and buildings.
Sentiment was also improving from aerospace, defense and machine-building customers, prompting the company to raise its full-year profit guidance after beating third-quarter expectations.
“Our sharp focus on driving industrial AI and our strong positioning in attractive markets give us a solid foundation for our success,” CEO Roland Busch told reporters.
The company’s industrial AI products, which help customers speed up innovation and improve productivity, were driving growth, he added.
Siemens was also benefiting from strong demand from the electronics and semiconductor makers, many of which are expanding capacity to supply AI-related equipment and chips.
“There is tremendous demand for electronics,” Busch said.
“They are building more and more factories, and they need to be automated, which is where Siemens’ business comes in.”
Siemens was working with nine of the Top 10 largest data center providers, he said, while orders had increased by a triple-digit percentage in the first nine months of its 2026 fiscal year.
Highest quarterly industrial profit
Companies like Siemens, Swiss rival ABB and France’s Schneider Electric are seeing surging demand as Big Tech races to add data centres, chips and electricity capacity for AI training and operation.
Capital spending by five of the largest technology companies, a key driver of the global data-centre boom, is expected to rise 75% in 2026 from more than $400 billion in 2025, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in April.
For the quarter to the end of June, Siemens reported industrial profit rising 25% to 3.52 billion euros ($4.09 billion), its highest quarterly figure, beating forecasts of 3.18 billion euros in a company-gathered consensus.
Revenue rose 7% to 20.79 billion euros, ahead of forecasts for 20.64 billion euros, while orders picked up 13% to 27.90 billion euros, also a quarterly record.
Its shares still fell 5.2% in mid-morning trading.
Up to Wednesday’s close, they had gained nearly 20% from the beginning of the year to hit a record high at 291.50 euros in the session.
The company also said it had agreed with German tax authorities on the treatment of Siemens Healthineers shares that it plans to distribute to investors following the planned spin-off, meaning the distribution would be tax-free for Siemens shareholders.
A top Turkish official reiterated on Wednesday a call for the European Union to include Ankara in its new trade policies as the bloc looks to boost its competitiveness and drive strategic autonomy at a time of rising competition from China and the threat of U.S. tariffs.
Trade Minister Ömer Bolat said that the EU’s emerging trade, competition and industrial policies should be designed to include Türkiye, arguing that such an approach would strengthen the bloc’s competitiveness and Europe’s economic security.
Bolat made the remarks in a meeting with Spanish Economy, Trade, and Business Minister Carlos Cuerpo in Madrid to discuss bilateral economic relations, Türkiye-EU ties, and recent global and regional economic developments.
“We discussed the EU’s recently implemented trade, competition and industrial policies, particularly the Industrial Acceleration Act (IAA),” Bolat said on Turkish social media platform NSosyal, referring to a draft bill introduced by the European Commission in March.
The bill includes a “Made in EU” designation, which sets local content obligations requiring a specific portion of goods in public procurement and support schemes to originate from the EU or customs union partners.
Türkiye has long advocated for the need to update the decades-old customs union partnership it has with the EU, its top trading partner. The business community has also often emphasized that Türkiye’s inclusion in new frameworks would benefit not only Ankara, but also the EU amid fragility and shifts in geopolitical order.
“We emphasized that shaping these policies through an inclusive approach that also covers Türkiye would make significant contributions both to the EU’s competitiveness and to Europe’s economic security,” Bolat noted.
He also said Spain is one of Türkiye’s most important trading partners within the EU, calling the two countries strategic partners, friends and allies.
The two also discussed Türkiye’s expectations for the updating and more effective implementation of the Türkiye-EU Customs Union, which Bolat said forms the foundation of Ankara’s strong economic integration with EU member states.
Public procurement was identified as another priority area that could advance economic cooperation, he said.
Upping goal for bilateral trade
Bolat and Cuerpo agreed to hold the fourth meeting of the Türkiye-Spain Joint Economic and Trade Commission (JETCO) in Madrid this fall, with strong participation from the business communities of both countries.
Spain is Türkiye’s fourth-largest trading partner within the EU, with annual bilateral trade currently totaling about $20.5 billion.
“Our goal is to increase our bilateral trade volume with Spain from $20.5 billion to $25 billion annually in the medium term,” Bolat said.
He added that the longstanding friendship and strategic partnership between the two countries would continue to get stronger through innovative business initiatives and mutual trust.
During the meeting, Bolat also congratulated Spain on winning the 2026 FIFA World Cup last month and expressed Türkiye’s condolences over recent wildfires in the country.
He reaffirmed Ankara’s support for Spain in dealing with the fires after Türkiye deployed two firefighting aircraft to Spain to help it contain the blazes.
The minister was also due to meet with his counterpart in Poland on Thursday and also meet with the businesspeople in the Central European country – also one of its important trading partners.
-
Economy2 days agoFor 1st time in decade, voters prefer Democrats over Republicans on economy
-
Economy2 days agoSyria to restore Iraq oil pipeline damaged during US invasion
-
Politics2 days agoErdoğan urges Israel to honor Gaza peace plan in talks with Saudi leader
-
Politics2 days agoFM Fidan holds talks with Libyan officials in Ankara
-
Politics2 days agoShip attacks prompt Türkiye to renew call for Black Sea safety
-
Economy1 day agoTürkiye eyes new corridor to carry oil, gas from Iraq, Gulf to Europe
-
Economy2 days agoHSBC says Türkiye’s policy easing delayed rather than derailed
-
Sports2 days agoFenerbahçe seek another step toward UCL return against Sturm Graz