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UAE Will Soon Deploy AI To Prevent Beach Drowning Incidents
The technology will be rolled out across several beaches before the end of this year.
Soon, cameras on UAE beaches will be equipped with a new artificial intelligence-based technology that can help lifeguards monitor swimmers and identify risks.
Blueguard, a Dubai-based water safety and first aid company, is working with a technology provider to equip UAE beaches with artificial intelligence to help lifeguards monitor swimmers and identify risks.
“On a busy day on the beach, there are hundreds of swimmers in the sea and just one or two lifeguards,” explains Luke Cunningham, founder and MD of Blueguard. “This technology can detect how many people are in the water and if any swimmer is in distress. This information is relayed back to the lifeguard”.
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Meanwhile, a wristband is being developed that will function as a beach entrance ticket and locker key. The band will contain a sensor that will raise an alarm if it detects a potential drowning incident.
Cunningham expects the technology to be rolled across several UAE beaches before the end of the year. The news comes as the World Health Organization (WHO) held the first-ever drowning prevention day on July 25th in response to figures showing 236,000 people die from drowning yearly.
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Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon
Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.
Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.
The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.
Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc
— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026
“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.
Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.
Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget
The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.
Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.
Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon
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