Category: 3. Business

OMAN:

Shrouded in fog in the lush mountains of southern Oman, a giant chasm plunges into the landscape, echoing with mysterious sounds that have spawned myths and legends among nearby tribes.

This enormous sinkhole is one of four that dot Dhofar governorate, including one of the world’s biggest: the yawning Kahf Teiq, 211 metres deep and 150 metres wide. At the Tawi Atair sinkhole, tourists potter around on concrete paths and stairways.

Not all of the holes are so welcoming, however. The sheer drop of the Sheeheet pit, a 40-minute drive away along mountain roads, is ringed with slippery mud, prompting the authorities to put up a fence and warning signs.

During AFP’s visit, one tourist slipped and slid perilously close to the edge. Dhofar’s governor, Marwan bin Turki Al-Said, gave assurances in a briefing attended by AFP that safety was a priority at the sinkholes.

Tawi Atair means “Well of Birds” in Dhofar’s regional language, a reference to the avian twittering, distorted by echoes, that reverberates off the rock. It lay unknown to the outside world until 1997, when a team of Slovenian researchers working with Oman’s Sultan Qaboos University brought it to international attention.

Now the sinkholes are marketed as a tourist attraction in Dhofar, whose temperate climate draws many visitors from the Gulf during its punishing summers. Long on the margins of the mainstream tourism circuit, Oman as a whole is increasingly attracting attention from international travellers seeking natural beauty and authenticity.

The country welcomed nearly four million visitors in 2024, with the government aiming to triple that figure by 2040 by focusing on sustainable tourism. Dhofar folklore has it that the sinkholes were created by meteorite strikes, direct hits from outer space that gouged the colossal craters.

But Ali Faraj Al-Kathiri, a geologist based in Dhofar, explains that water seeping into the porous limestone forms an acid that then dissolves it, creating the caverns over a period of thousands of years.

The Oman sinkholes are not to be confused with the “Well of Hell”, the foul-smelling, pitch-black Barhout pit across the border in eastern Yemen that is reputed to be a prison for demons.

Uncertainty about the direction of the U.S. economy again has catapulted the price of gold to near all-time highs. Increasing expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in September may keep it there.

Spot gold reached a high of $3,418.14 per troy ounce Thursday, within striking distance of its June 13 all-time high of $3,448.50. The price of gold has gained more than 3% since hitting a one-month low of $3,311.80 a week ago, just before the release of employment data that showed the U.S. labor market to be far weaker than previously thought.

Seeking Safety

The latest rally falls in line with gold’s reputation as a safe haven for investors in times of economic uncertainty.

The jobs report last Friday showed that employers hired fewer workers in July than economists had estimated, while the unemployment rate ticked higher to 4.2%. Even more worrisome, employment numbers for the previous two months were revised dramatically lower.

Weakening labor market conditions could portend lower economic growth, something investors have been worried about amid uncertainty about the impact that tariffs will have. Concerns about the economic outlook have helped fuel gold’s 30% price rise year-to-date.

Fed Rate-Cut Expectations Rise

The weak jobs numbers have boosted market expectations that the Fed’s policy committee will cut the benchmark fed funds rate when it meets in September. After trimming the rate a full percentage point in late 2024, the Fed has refrained from cutting rates this year, with officials saying they need more data showing how tariffs affect inflation before adjusting policy. (The Fed has a dual mandate to promote high levels of employment and to maintain price stability.)

While the Fed has stood pat on rates, the European Central Bank has cut interest rates eight times since June 2024. The ECB rate cuts have bolstered the value of gold globally. Because gold does not offer a regular yield payment to investors, it tends to perform better when competing investments, such as bonds, offer lower interest payments.

That’s why Fed rate cuts, were they to occur, could further underpin demand for gold.

Prior to the jobs report on Aug. 1, just 37% of investors expected a September rate cut, based on the fed funds futures market. Now, more than 90% expect a quarter-point cut in the Fed’s benchmark target rate to 4%-4.25%, as well as additional cuts before the end of 2025.

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The rollout of a new Instagram Map has prompted confusion among some users of the app, who voiced their privacy concerns online after Meta unveiled the feature.

The purpose of the maps feature, according to a press release from Meta, is to provide a “lightweight” method for users to connect with each other and explore local happenings by allowing people to share where they are in real time. Users can access their “maps” by going to their DMs.

When users click on the map, it shows the geolocation of users who have opted into sharing their location, based on the last time they opened Instagram or shared an Instagram story. When users first open the map, they are prompted with options of “who can see your location,” allowing them to choose whether or not they want to share their location.

After the feature was unveiled on Wednesday, users began sharing screenshots of what the map looks like on their pages. A handful of posts criticizing the feature have amassed hundreds of thousands of views as they circulate across X, Threads, TikTok and Instagram itself. Some of the most viral posts were from people like influencer and “Bachelor” franchise alum Kelley Flanagan, who issued a warning to people online to turn their location-sharing off, suggesting it could be a risk to their privacy and safety.

“Meta has a poor track record when it comes to data privacy,” Lia Haberman, author of the social media newsletter ICYMI, told NBC News in an email interview.

Just this week, Haberman noted that a California jury ruled Meta violated the state’s Invasion of Privacy Act in a case involving the period-tracking app Flo. (A Meta spokesperson told CNBC that the company disagreed with the ruling.)

“User data is Meta’s golden goose, it’s what they’ve been able to sell to advertisers for years — mostly ethically and legally but not always,” Haberman said.

Meta emphasized that “location sharing is off unless you opt in. If you do share your location with friends, you have controls to customize this experience.” Users can select specific followers who see their location, or those on their “close friends” list.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri doubled down on that sentiment, writing in a Threads post that he uses “the map to share what I’m up to with a handful of my closest friends, and I curate that list carefully.”

Still, Haberman said, she’s concerned that users won’t realize the full extent of what they’ve provided Instagram access to, or when their location might show up on the map, through tagging places in their posts or just opening the app.

The platform is not the first to introduce such location-sharing capabilities. Many young social media users have utilized a similar feature on the app Snapchat, where “Snap Map” has been in place since June 2017. Some social media users also likened Instagram Maps to the once-popular FourSquare Swarm app, which allowed users to “check-in” to their favorite places, discover new spots and stay connected with friends.

In recent years, Instagram and other social media platforms have faced scrutiny from lawmakers and organizations about online safety, particularly around teen users.

With Maps, Meta says that its supervision features allow parents to be notified when a teen starts sharing their location, and can turn their teen’s access off to the feature at any time, if they use Meta’s parental controls. (Though many teens maintain accounts hidden from their parents.)

Common Sense Media, a group that studies the impact of media and technology on kids and families, published a report in 2023 that found that location-sharing on social media platforms, which it defined as “automatic sharing of users’ locations,” had two potential negative experiences for young female users. There are “concerns about safety,” the group wrote, as well as the “Fear of missing out (“FOMO”) or social exclusion” among users. But the positive impact could be “Social connection.”

Still, “girls were most likely to say that location-sharing (45%) and public accounts (33%) have had a mostly negative effect on them, compared to other features,” the report found.

In 2024, after news outlets first reported on Instagram’s plans to develop a “Friend Map,” several lawmakers issued concerns about how this type of feature could cause harm to younger users.

“Instagram’s proposed feature will require the tracking of young people and their devices’ locations,” Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., and Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., wrote in a May 21, 2024 letter to Mosseri, calling geolocation surveillance of minors “an unnecessary violation of privacy.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., also responded to the “Friend Map” development reports last year, writing in an X post in March, “We should be doing all we can to protect our kids’ safety on social media — not exposing their real-time location to pedophiles and traffickers.”

Blackburn raised similar concerns about Snap Map in 2019, writing in a letter to CEO Evan Spiegel that “if location is left in public mode, Snap Map can reveal the location of gullible child users to complete strangers, along with their Snap video feed.”

At a Senate hearing in 2021, Jennifer Stout, vice president of global public policy for Snap Inc., said the app “makes it intentionally difficult for strangers to find people that they don’t know. We do not have open profiles, we do not have browsable pictures. We don’t have the ability to understand who people’s friends are and where they go to school.”

Representatives from Blackburn, Castor and Trahan’s offices did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday regarding Instagram’s official launch of their new feature.

Many Instagram users said they worry that the new feature could also put other vulnerable groups at risk — including creators, who have very public personas, and women, who often face harassment online.

“When you’re constantly broadcasting where you are in real time, you’re sharing your daily routines,” Caitlin Sarian, known to her 1.4 million Instagram followers as cybersecuritygirl, said in a video post on Wednesday. “… where you live, where you work, literally everything about you to potential hackers, stalkers, bad exes, all of the above.”

Another creator, known as Nerdytravelingwriter on TikTok, echoed similar concerns in a video posted on Wednesday, calling it a “safety issue.”

“Think of how many creators have stalkers,” the creator, who has over 895,000 followers on TikTok said. “I’m thinking of my followers who just got out of abusive relationships. They’re still mutuals with their abusers.”

Instagram’s help center does note that users are able to hide their locations in the map feature from specific accounts if they choose, which could help those who know which profiles may want to use the information for malicious purposes.

“If you see that you’ve shared your location in the past with Instagram via phone settings, it does NOT mean the map feature is turned on automatically or that people can see your location,” the platform wrote in its Instagram story. “The reason you’re seeing your story, post or reel show up on the map is because you’ve tagged it with a location. It will appear on the map for 24 hours and does not share your real-time or live location.”

When asked for comment on the concerns, a Meta spokesperson reiterated Instagram’s policy, stating that the Map feature “is off by default, and your live location is never shared unless you choose to turn it on. If you do, only people you follow back — or a private, custom list you select — can see your location.”

Haberman, who was among those posting about the recent Instagram news on Threads, suggested one of the main reasons Instagram’s feature is being met with some criticism is because it came as a surprise to users.

“That’s fine for something with no stakes,” she said. “but a map of people’s locations has a very real world impact. More care should have been taken.”

The government’s proposed levy on international student fees could cost universities in England more than £600m a year if it goes ahead, a study has found.

The 6% surcharge on tuition fees paid by overseas students, floated in the Home Office’s recent immigration white paper, would particularly hit leading universities such as University College London (UCL) and the University of Manchester, based on the figures compiled by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi).

The policy would leave universities in a difficult decision over whether to pass on the cost of the levy to students or absorb some or all of it from the fees they charged, in effect cutting their income.

Nick Hillman, Hepi’s director, said: “The proposed levy on international students comes up in just about every meeting I attend. University leaders are worried it will be yet another weight dragging them down in the struggle to remain globally competitive.”

Based on annual fees from non-UK students totalling £10.3bn, the levy would bring in £621m. UCL would contribute £43m, Manchester £27m, Imperial College London £22m and the University of Oxford £17m.

The levy will also hit universities that raise a high proportion of funds from international students, including the University of Hertfordshire and the University of the Arts London.

The government has said the money raised by the levy would be used to fund “the higher education and skills system”, with further details to come in the autumn budget.

While vice-chancellors are hoping the bulk of the funds will be re-invested in higher education, Hillman said it can’t be taken for granted.

“The levy is designed to raise more money for the government’s educational priorities but it is not clear if all the money will come back out of the Treasury, nor how it will be spent if it does,” he said.

“Threatening an expensive new tax on one of the country’s most successful sectors with only a rough idea of how the money will be used seems far from ideal. Currently, the levy is a shadow looming large over universities as they prepare for the next academic year.”

The Home Office estimated the levy would initially lower student numbers by 14,000 a year, although universities say that is likely to be an underestimate.

Many universities have already seen lower income from international students following recent visa restrictions.

Vivienne Stern, the chief executive of Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors, said: “We would urge government to think carefully about the impact that a levy on international student fees will have on universities and the attractiveness of the UK as a study destination.”

US President Donald Trump is pushing to make it easier for Americans to use retirement savings to invest in cryptocurrencies, private equity, property, gold and other kinds of non-traditional assets.

On Thursday, he ordered regulators to look for ways to change rules that might discourage employers from including such offerings in workplace retirement accounts, known in the US as 401ks.

The move is intended to eventually give everyday workers new access to investments formerly reserved for wealthy individuals and institutions, while opening up previously untouched pools of funding for firms in those fields.

But critics say it could increase risks for savers.

Most employers in the US do not offer traditional pensions, which come with a guaranteed payout after retirement.

Instead, employees are given the option of contributing part of their pay cheque to investment accounts, with employers typically bolstering with additional contributions.

Government rules have historically held the firms offering the accounts responsible for considering factors such as risk and expense.

In the past, employers have shied away from offering investments like private equity, which often have higher fees and face fewer disclosure requirements than public companies and can be less easy to convert to cash.

The order gives the Department of Labor 180 days to review rules and experts said any change was unlikely to be felt immediately.

But investment management giants such as State Street and Vanguard, known for their retirement accounts, have already announced partnerships with the likes of alternative asset managers Apollo Global and Blackstone to start offering private-equity focused retirement funds.

Trump’s personal business interests include firms involved with crypto and investment accounts.

The Department of Labor in May rescinded guidance from 2022 that urged firms to exercise “extreme care” before adding crypto to investment menus in retirement accounts.

During Trump’s first term, the Department of Labor issued guidance aimed at encouraging retirement plans to invest in private equity funds, but concerns about litigation limited take-up and former President Joe Biden later revoked it.