Saudi Arabia is pushing into the world of gaming as part of its Saudi Vision 2030, which aims to open up and diversify the kingdom’s economy outside of the oil industry, the Associated Press says. The push is driven by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a fervent gamer himself, who set up the Savvy Games Group under the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund last year to invest USD 39 bn in the gaming industry. The company has since acquired Scopely, a mobile gaming player, in a USD 4.9 bn transaction and invested USD 265 mn in Chinese esports agency VSPO.

What’s in it for KSA? W atching video gamers compete is a thriving business supported by mns of fans, corporate sponsors, and even celebrity players. These events provide “prime advertising [potential], and of course, you are promoting the brand of your country as a cool, forward-thinking, interesting place to go on holiday,” a Gulf expert at Brussels-based thinktank European Center for International Affairs told the AP. The gaming industry as a whole generated some USD 184.4 bn in revenues last year — more than “the combined earnings of the global box office, music streaming and album sales, and the top five wealthiest sports leagues,” according to a 2021 BCG report.

Salty fields create a new farming reality in the Med: The Mediterranean’s climate is changing faster than any other place on earth, with average temperatures already up 1.5°C since the industrial age, feeding into a shift in agricultural practices in the region, reports the Wall Street Journal. The culmination of higher mercury readings, rising sea levels that reach deeper inland, lacking rainfall or freshwater to flush out fields, and prolonged droughts have created salty fields, depleting farmers of their usual harvests. Now farmers are reconsidering their options.

Changing lanes: Some farmers are looking to adapt their harvests to the new realities, switching out rice crops for soybeans, which require less water, or growing tropical fruits that enjoy the heat, like mangoes, avocados, and bananas. Others are modifying the crop to suit the environment with new breeds of apples that can withstand higher temperatures or drought-proof tomatoes in development. Yet, scientists aren’t optimistic with the UN reporting intensifying global warming in the Med in the coming decades. “You can fight it to some extent, but adaptation has its limit and at some point you can’t adapt any more, you have to change,” Carles Ibañez Martí, head of climate change at Eurecat.

TikTok is the latest app that’s trying to capitalize on the (impending) downfall of Twitter: TikTok rolled out text-based posts as a new feature earlier this week, coinciding with Elon Musk’s abrupt decision to change Twitter’s logo from the iconic blue bird to X. TikTok explained that the new feature is aimed at “expanding the boundaries of content creation” by allowing users to express their creativity, but the uptake on the social media platform has been relatively weak, the Associated Press notes. TikTok jumping on the text-based content wagon came just a couple of weeks after Meta’s Instagram rolled out Threads, essentially a clone of Twitter, where user posts can include photos, videos up to five minutes long, and can be shared directly to Instagram stories.

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