DUBAI: In the densely populated Al Barsha area of Dubai, a fire suddenly broke out in a residential building on Tuesday afternoon.

However, the Dubai Civil Defence responded swiftly, and with the help of the advanced “Shaheen Drones”, the blaze was quickly brought under control.

According to officials, emergency teams arrived at the scene within six minutes of receiving the report, and the drones immediately helped extinguish the fire.

Residents were safely evacuated, and fortunately, there were no casualties.

Dubai authorities said: “The rapid and effective action of the Shaheen Drones, using water and foam, saved precious lives and prevented the fire from spreading.”

The Dubai Civil Defence confirmed that the Shaheen Drones are specially designed to combat fires in buildings up to 200 metres tall, with each drone carrying 1,200 litres of water and firefighting foam, allowing for fast and efficient firefighting operations.

The National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority (NCEMA) has announced that by 2028, the use of drones for firefighting is expected to increase twenty-fold, and in the future, 70% of fire emergency decisions will be supported by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

China’s top internet regulator said Tuesday it would take action against ByteDance-owned news app Jinri Toutiao and Alibaba’s internet browser company UCWeb for allegedly displaying harmful content, a day after announcing a two-month social media crackdown.

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) vowed on Monday to combat content containing “malicious incitement of conflict” and “negative outlooks on life such as world-weariness”.

Beijing requires social media companies to moderate content on their platforms, with posts strictly controlled to avoid anything deemed to be too subversive, vulgar, pornographic or generally harmful.

The CAC had already announced penalties this month against three popular digital platforms— micro-blogging platform Weibo, short video app Kuaishou and Instagram-like Xiaohongshu—for allegedly neglecting content management duties.

Authorities have not specified what punitive actions are being taken against those platforms.

The CAC said on Tuesday that measures taken against news aggregator app Toutiao included “summoning the company for a meeting, ordering rectification within a specified time limit, issuing a warning, and strictly dealing with those responsible”.

The platform had failed to fulfil its primary responsibility of managing information content and allowed “harmful content” to appear on the main section of its trending search list, “thereby damaging the online ecosystem”, the statement said.

It gave no further details about the content type or punishments.

“Internet regulators will continue to focus on prominent illegal and non-compliant activities that undermine the online ecosystem,” the CAC added.

In a separate statement on Tuesday, the CAC said it would take similar measures against UCWeb after the Alibaba-owned platform displayed entries relating to “extremely sensitive and malicious” events and topics such as “online violence and the privacy of minors”.

The two-month campaign announced on Monday by the CAC aims “to regulate the malicious incitement of conflict and the promotion of violence and vicious currents”, the CAC said.

The statement then listed specific online issues authorities hope to tackle in the crackdown, including “exploiting social hot spots to forcibly associate identity, region or gender with other information, stigmatising and hyping them”.

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh has passed away, the Saudi News Agency reported on Tuesday. 

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman offered their condolences to his family, the Saudi people, and the Islamic world.

According to Saudi media, the funeral prayer of Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh will be held after Asr prayer at the Imam Turki bin Abdullah Mosque in Riyadh.

“With the passing of Al-Sheikh, Saudi Arabia and the Islamic world have lost a distinguished scholar who made significant contributions to the service of Islam and Muslims,” the Royal Court stated.

Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh was appointed as Saudi Grand Mufti by King Fahd in 1999 as the successor of Sheikh Abdul Aziz Ibn Baz.

Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh was also the president of the Council of Senior Scholars and had also performed the duties of delivering the Hajj sermons.

Furthermore, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, has ordered that his funeral prayers in absentia also be performed at the Grand Mosque in Makkah, the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah, and in all mosques across the Kingdom.