Sudan has been at war since April 2023, when fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. The fighting has destroyed infrastructure and caused what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Despite the war, the two countries are pressing ahead with a maritime boundary file that has remained unresolved for more than half a century.

Critics argue that with Sudan deeply divided and without a constitutional government, a binding treaty affecting future generations and the country’s sovereign rights is being pursued without input or ratification from a Sudanese parliament. Sudanese political analyst Ammar Siddiq told The Standard that without elected legislative institutions, al-Burhan has no constitutional mandate to finalise agreements of this scale on his own.

A half-century wait and sudden

The dispute dates back to the 1960s, when valuable mineral deposits were found beneath the seabed between the Saudi and Sudanese coasts.

In May 1974, the two countries signed an agreement to regulate the exploitation of these resources. Under the agreement, Sudan holds exclusive sovereign rights over the seabed extending eastward from its coast to the point where the water is 1,000 metres deep, and Saudi Arabia holds the same rights off its own coast. The area between the two forms a common zone in which both countries have equal rights.

The 1974 deal managed economic exploitation rather than settling a final border. It established a Saudi-Sudanese Red Sea Joint Commission to oversee exploration, funded primarily by the Saudi government.

The two governments announced plans in 2019 to revive the agreement. A joint committee met on September 20, 2025, to discuss amendments to a final draft, The Standard reported. In October 2025, al-Burhan postponed the final agreement until Sudan settled its own maritime and land border with Egypt, according to the same report.

Critics ask why the arrangement was never formalised as a boundary. They also question whether Saudi Arabia, the wealthier and more technically capable partner, stands to gain disproportionately if the terms are settled under current conditions.

Economists at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy estimate the mineral reserves in the common zone at billions of dollars.

Al-Burhan at the Centre of the New Delimitation Drive

Al-Burhan, Sudan’s de facto ruler, appears increasingly willing to finalise the maritime border deal despite questions over his legitimacy and the war in his country. Saudi Arabia is among the army’s main foreign backers, the Irish Times reported. Analysts say al-Burhan is seeking Saudi financial and military support to sustain his war effort.

Foreign affairs journalist Graham Matthews argued in Modern Diplomacy in August that Saudi Arabia is emerging as the main regional underwriter of al-Burhan’s effort to turn battlefield gains into a political settlement on his own terms.

On September 14, 2026, al-Burhan chaired a meeting of a Sudanese committee working within the financial and investment framework of the Saudi-Sudanese Supreme Council for Strategic Cooperation and Coordination. The two countries’ foreign ministers signed the council’s founding agreement in Riyadh on August 17, according to the Sudan News Agency.

The meeting named the Sea Ports Corporation as the main federal agency coordinating civilian and military bodies. It gave the corporation’s executive secretariat direct access to historical maps and archival documents on the Red Sea and maritime borders.

The meeting also agreed to create a technical committee of the National Boundary Commission and the Sudanese Navy to review legal frameworks and draft a technical delimitation plan. It approved developing national maritime monitoring centres in coordination with Saudi Arabia’s ports of Jeddah and Yanbu.

Eight days later, on September 22, US State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a statement that neither the SAF nor the RSF, nor their leaders, represent legitimate, constitutional governance for Sudan. Sudan’s Foreign Ministry rejected the statement the following day, Middle East Monitor reported.

Sudan restarted legal preparations for delimiting its maritime baselines in February 2025, drawing on submissions it made to the United Nations in 2017. That year, Khartoum formally objected to the 2016 maritime boundary agreement between Egypt and Saudi Arabia over its link to the disputed Halayeb Triangle, and Egypt rejected Sudan’s claim in a December 2017 declaration to the UN.

Shift in Red Sea Dynamics and Sovereign Risks

The push comes amid intensified regional rivalry over maritime security, energy routes and port access across the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Saudi Arabia is expanding its influence on both shores, while the authority in Port Sudan relies heavily on outside political and financial support.

Talks between the two governments have moved toward maritime management and economic jurisdiction, with the Supreme Council for Strategic Cooperation and Coordination playing a growing role in relations between Riyadh and al-Burhan’s administration.

The technical work has raised concern inside Sudan. With no elected legislature to review or ratify international treaties, questions remain over the legal validity of any final, binding border agreement signed during a civil war.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how colleges and universities educate students and prepare them for the workforce. 

As higher education works to establish guidelines around AI, they must address a larger picture: How can students use AI without losing critical skills? 

In an interview with Fox Digital Business, Richard Corcoran, president of New College of Florida and the state’s former education commissioner, said AI could either strengthen education or create shortcuts that weaken the learning process.

“I think it could be a great thing, and it could be a very dangerous thing,” Corcoran told Fox News Digital. “It’s how we manage it and what we do from here.”

PURDUE UNIVERSITY INTRODUCES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COURSEWORK AS A GRADUATION REQUIREMENT FOR INCOMING FRESHMAN

Artificial intelligence is transforming colleges and universities. (Getty Images, File / Getty Images)

AI tools are already being used across the U.S. by students to brainstorm, summarize information and improve writing skills. Universities are responsible for adapting and creating guidelines for students’ success. 

Corcoran said universities should focus on teaching students how to think critically and evaluate information rather than preparing them for a specific job or technical skill.

“You’ve got to go back and teach those critical thinking skills,” Corcoran said. “You’ve got to have all those soft skills. You have to have them be great thinkers.”

He also said that AI could be a great use for universities to operate more effectively. Colleges can use technology in student recruitment, marketing, human resources and administrative work. 

MELANIA TRUMP URGES AI ‘VIGILANCE,’ SAYS AMERICANS NEED TO GET EDUCATED

Students use laptops during college class as universities navigate the growing use of AI in higher education. (Getty Images, File)

By using AI in these areas, universities are able to run smoothly and effectively. 

“AI tools in achieving efficiency have been excellent,” Corcoran said.

At the same time, the growth of AI is also forcing universities to rethink what skills students need to learn before entering the workplace. As technology is doing more entry-level tasks, employers are starting to look for skills centered on communication and creativity. 

Corcoran said New College has sought to combine technology and the liberal arts in its curriculum. 

This approach is designed to help students apply AI in practical ways while still using their critical thinking skills. 

OVERRELIANCE ON AI COULD REPLACE ‘SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE’ IN THE WORKPLACE, PROTOCOL EXPERT WARNS

People walk toward an office building as universities prepare students for a workforce increasingly shaped by AI (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images, File)

Corcoran also pointed to New College’s senior thesis requirement as an example of how students can use AI without allowing it to replace independent thought. 

Students may use AI to assist with research or drafting, but they must defend their work before a panel of professors.

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“AI can help you draft that document,” Corcoran said. “It cannot help you defend it standing before three professors.”

As AI continues to develop, universities will continue to adapt their policies. 

The challenge, Corcoran said, will be ensuring that AI remains a tool that enhances education rather than a substitute for learning.

The car was shown Sept. 24 at the Renault Carwalk and is due on the brand’s stand at the Paris Motor Show from Oct. 12 to 18. After that it is earmarked for the Renault Collections museum in Flins, France, planned to open in about 15 months. Flins is where the original 8 was built.

Alexandre Malval, Renault’s vice president of design, said: “With Renault 8 Gordini Concept, we wanted to spark emotion by drawing on both our heritage and modern times, bringing together the icons of yesterday and the future. This exercise in style sets out to reinvent Renault 8 Gordini for the modern day. The aim of this coupé is to inspire emotion and capture the imagination of all car enthusiasts. And when I talk about emotion, I’m not talking about nostalgia, but real passion for cars.”

On the stance he added: “We updated the distinctive styling of the original Renault 8, which was virtually symmetrical from front to rear, to give it a more dynamic look. With the flowing cabin lines, wide track, prominent wings and wheels of 19 inches at the front and 20 inches at the rear, it appears to hug the road.”

Romain Gauvin, Renault’s concept design chief, told Autocar: “The original 8 was a very humble car, a sort of working class hero. We wanted to keep that honesty for this concept. It’s not a two-metre-wide, 1000bhp machine: it’s still approachable and makes you smile.”

Asked about a production run, Gauvin said: “Production is not something we considered for this car. It is really a one-off concept. But I’m a designer, so if the company decides to make a production run out of it, I would be very happy to make it.”

Thomas Altet, a color and materials designer, said: “The colour of the concept car was inspired by Bleu de France, the signature colour of the original Renault 8 Gordini.”

The concept measures 4.12 meters long, 1.88 meters wide and 1.27 meters tall — short, wide and very low. Renault lists a single rear electric motor at about 270 horsepower, or 266 bhp / 198 kW in some briefings, driving the rear wheels. Torque, battery size, range, weight and 0-60 times were not published. The body is described as carbon. The front end is treated as a single lift-off panel, a motorsport nod that also hides shut lines.

Round lamps recall the 1962–71 Renault 8. Extra spotlights echo period rally cars. White Gordini stripes run as a graphic that ties the windscreen grille to the tail lamps. Staggered 19- and 20-inch wheels and a deep diffuser complete the café-racer brief Renault used in its press language.

The original 8 Gordini of 1964 put a tuned, rear-mounted four-cylinder of about 95 horsepower in a four-door family shell. Rear drive and a light tail made it a cheap way to learn car control. Jean Ragnotti and other French rally names used similar cars as trainers. Amédée Gordini’s name later sat on hotter Clios before Alpine absorbed the performance role.

This concept is not that car. It is a two-door, two-seat show piece after an internal contest of more than 300 sketches. Two designs were modeled at 2:5 scale; the final car mixed both. It follows other heritage one-offs: an electric R17 restomod with Ora Ïto and the Renault 5 Diamant art car with Pierre Gonalons. Unlike those collaborations, the 8 Gordini was designed in-house and is the first studio show car under Malval.

Renault has put the 4 and 5 back into production as EVs. Autocar and others note that Alpine already covers small sports cars, which weakens the business case for a second compact two-seater with a revived tuner badge. Auto Express reported that, at unveiling, Renault had no plan for a road-legal version.

A review of the object, not a road test, stops at what can be seen. Proportions are the story: shorter than many hot hatches, wider than the old 8, low enough that the glasshouse looks perched. The power figure is in Alpine A110 territory, not hypercar theater. Without a published curb weight, that number is a brochure line.

What buyers cannot do is order one. What designers can do is lift lamps, stripes, blue paint and the idea of a small rear-drive coupe into later Clios or Alpines. That is the usual job of a Carwalk car.

Paris will judge the surface. The museum will keep the artifact. Until Renault opens an order book, the 8 Gordini of 2026 remains a 270-hp electric sculpture with rally lights and a designer’s smile — not a car you can drive home.

This article was written by

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Conor McKenna is co-founder and chief executive of Go Swag, a Glasgow company that sources, stores and ships branded gifts and merchandise for more than 1,000 organisations, including Meta, Apple and Netflix.

In May 2026 the business raised $5m (£3.7m) in a round led by Mercia Ventures with Techstart Ventures, taking total funding to $6.2m. The money will push Go Swag further into the United States, open a warehouse in Southeast Asia and grow the team from 30 to 70 people. He tells Business Matters why he learned to say no to clients, and why he thinks the catalogue is finished.

What do you currently do at Go Swag?

As co-founder and CEO, my core focus is setting the strategic direction of the company, driving our global expansion and leading product innovation. We have built Go Swag as a tech-enabled corporate gifting platform to take the heavy lifting out of branded merchandise for global enterprises.

That means a lot of my day-to-day involves pushing our technology suite, from AI-driven product curation to customisable recipient management systems. Our Claim Pages let recipients enter their own details, and Sonny, our AI recommendation engine, helps clients choose products. Anything that ensures we are eliminating friction for our clients at every step.

What was the inspiration behind your business?

Go Swag started with a problem my co-founder Ben and I ran into first-hand while working at a software agency in Glasgow. We were asked to build an onboarding pack for a new designer, but quickly found that the available options were low quality and split across fragmented suppliers. We ended up sourcing and packaging everything ourselves to create the kind of first impression we wanted the new joiner to have.

When we asked HR about scaling that experience, they showed us the operational nightmare behind it: managing dozens of vendors, holding inventory and handling international shipping.

Coming from design backgrounds, we saw a trillion-dollar industry running on 20-year-old catalogues and manual processes. Companies were spending millions perfecting their digital brand, yet handing out disposable merchandise physically. We launched Go Swag to bridge that gap completely.

What will the new funding be used for?

We raised $5m, led by Mercia Ventures with Techstart Ventures and a group of strategic angel investors. It will help us grow in the United States and open a warehouse in Southeast Asia, alongside the ones we already run in the UK, the Netherlands and the US.

We also plan to grow the team from 30 to 70 people across sales, engineering and operations, and to keep automating quoting, account management and product recommendations.

Who do you admire?

My biggest inspiration is my mum. She left home at 17 and built a remarkable career through sheer determination and work ethic, eventually becoming a CEO. Watching her resilience up close taught me what leadership, adaptability and perseverance look like in practice.

In business, I admire founders and builders who question industry status quos rather than accepting them. Anyone who takes a stagnant category and fundamentally rebuilds it through better technology and design principles is someone I look up to.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?

We should have learned to say no sooner. Early on, it is easy to assume the goal is simply to hit the brief and match the target price, when in fact clients rely on your expertise to push back. Accepting a product compromise might feel fine in the moment, but taking shortcuts on quality is too big a risk for any brand to take.

We work with some of the world’s most ambitious companies, and we have staked our reputation on making sure physical merchandise gets exactly the same attention to detail as their digital homepage. Bringing that level of honesty to a pitch is not always the easiest way to win business, but it is how you build real trust in the long term.

What defines your way of doing business?

I have always been a builder, someone who likes taking complex systems apart to figure out where they fail and how to rebuild them cleaner. That mindset dictates how we operate: lean teams, rapid execution and an uncompromising focus on quality.

We believe corporate gifting should not be treated as a transactional procurement task; it is a high-impact brand touchpoint. We act as an extension of our clients’ teams by taking complete ownership of the back end. That means handling everything from recipient sizing to global distribution across three continents, so enterprise leaders can stay focused on their core business.

What advice would you give to someone starting out?

Be prepared to outwork everyone, and surround yourself with smart, determined people. Most of building anything worthwhile is boring, repetitive work that nobody sees. You have to learn to enjoy that bit, not just the outcome.

And do not outsource your conviction. Most interesting businesses sound like terrible ideas until someone proves otherwise. Ask for opinions, listen and learn, but remember that most people have not tried what you are trying. Build it, find customers and let real transactions tell you whether you are right.

SAN DIEGO — San Diego County health officials are urging residents to take precautions against mosquito bites after West Nile virus cases surged to their highest level in a decade, prompting emergency spraying operations in neighborhoods identified as having elevated risk.

The county has confirmed 11 cases of West Nile virus so far this year, a stark increase from last year, when no cases were reported in the county at all. Of those 11 confirmed cases, four people have required hospitalization.

In response to the surge, county vector control officials deployed spraying trucks early Friday morning in Coronado, an area identified as having a particularly high concentration of cases, with plans to return Saturday at 1 a.m. to spray again. Signs alerting residents to the spraying operation have been posted throughout the affected neighborhoods, with a map outlining the treatment area spanning from 2nd Street to Ocean Boulevard and from F Avenue to Glorietta Boulevard.

Vector control officials explained the basis for targeting that specific area. “Identified an area that we see as having a higher risk of West Nile virus, based on finding positive mosquitoes within a limited area,” officials said.

West Nile virus typically originates in infected birds, which mosquitoes then pick up and transmit to humans through bites. According to health officials, approximately 80% of people who become infected with the virus do not develop any symptoms at all. Among the remaining 20% who do become symptomatic, most experience flu-like symptoms, including fever and muscle aches. Severe symptoms occur in roughly 1% of cases, and in some of those instances, the virus can prove fatal.

San Diego County Public Health Officer Dr. Sayone Thihalolipavan emphasized the importance of prevention given the current lack of medical treatment options for the virus. “It’s really important to understand there is no vaccine, there is no treatment for West Nile virus, so we have to take prevention really, really seriously,” Thihalolipavan said.

With no vaccine or specific treatment available, county officials are focusing their public messaging on practical prevention steps residents can take at home. Officials are advising residents to eliminate any standing water around their properties, including in flower pots and bird baths, since stagnant water provides breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Additional recommended precautions include using insect repellent and wearing long sleeves and pants when outdoors, particularly during dawn and dusk hours, when mosquito activity typically peaks and residents face the greatest risk of exposure.

Officials also flagged a broader environmental factor that could extend the current elevated risk beyond the season’s typical peak. A forecasted El Niño weather pattern may generate additional standing water across the region, potentially prolonging mosquito breeding conditions beyond West Nile virus’s typical peak season, which generally runs from June through October in the county.

The surge in San Diego County cases mirrors a broader national trend this year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an unusually warm and wet spring contributed to an early surge in mosquito breeding and virus circulation across the United States this year, a pattern that appears to be reflected in San Diego County’s own significant year-over-year increase in confirmed cases.

West Nile virus has circulated in the United States for more than two decades since it was first detected domestically, with case counts fluctuating from year to year depending on weather conditions, mosquito population levels and other environmental factors that influence transmission. The jump from zero confirmed cases in San Diego County last year to 11 this year, with four requiring hospitalization, represents a particularly sharp swing that has prompted the county’s more aggressive spraying response in the areas identified as highest risk.

Residents in Coronado and surrounding areas covered by the current spraying operation are advised to review the posted notices and treatment area maps for specific guidance on the timing and scope of the mosquito control efforts in their neighborhoods. County officials have indicated they will continue monitoring mosquito populations and case counts closely, with additional spraying operations possible in other areas of the county should further zones of elevated risk be identified through ongoing mosquito surveillance testing.

With the current case count already the highest recorded in the county in ten years and the season’s typical peak transmission window still ongoing, county health officials are continuing to emphasize that individual prevention measures, eliminating standing water, using repellent, and covering exposed skin during peak mosquito activity hours, remain the most effective tools available to residents in the absence of any vaccine or specific medical treatment for the virus.