Unabashedly brutal “Grand Theft Auto V” hit the streets Tuesday in a sequel that promises to enthrall fans of the blockbuster video game franchise.
Rockstar Games spent five years crafting the title and the time has paid off for gamers, according to a slew of reviews giving it top marks.
“GTA V has been worth the five-year wait,” said computerandvideogames.com digital manager John Houlihan.
“You can really see the maturity in this version, the graphics look sensational — it really is like being in a virtual copy of LA.” GTA V is set in a fictional city of Los Santos based on real-world Los Angeles and its nearby hills and beaches.
The videogame franchise has won legions of fans and cadres of critics with game play in which triumph depends on acts such as carjacking, gambling and killing.
“GTA is essentially the ‘Sopranos’ of videogames,” Tech Savvy analyst Scott Steinberg said, making a reference to a hugely popular US cable television series centered on Mafia characters.
“Everyone talks about the series as violent, but compared to what you are seeing in the movies and on television GTA is relatively tame. Certainly, it is a mature game for mature audiences .” GTA V is billed by the New York City-based video game publisher as the “largest and most ambitious” title in a franchise that has sold more than 114 million copies since its debut in 1997.
“Grand Theft Auto V builds on everything we’ve learned about open world gaming,” said Rockstar founder Sam Houser.
Versions of “GTA V” for play on Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 video game consoles or personal computers powered by Windows software launched worldwide Tuesday in respective time zones.
Midnight release events were planned at shops in an array of countries to let GTA lovers snap up the game the instant Tuesday arrives.
EB Games held a midnight launch party in Sydney’s World Square, featuring DJs and free burritos.
Torrential rain put a dampener on the night but didn’t stop GTA zealots.
“If a storm stops you from getting your hands on gta you ain’t a die-hard fan,” Ryan Nero said in a message fired off at Twitter.
“I just rode through a hardcore thunderstorm to get my copy.” GTA V was released in 320 stores across the country Australia.
“There has been a huge buzz about the game,” Rashaan Walker said as the clock ticked down on a midnight launch event at the San Francisco area Best Buy shop where he is a sales supervisor.
“We’ve had tons of people asking about it.” Walker, a 26-year-old GTA fan, had in mind to stick around after the end of his shift to pick up a copy of the game.
“It’s exciting,” Walker said. “In this one you can go online and bring together a clique of friends and go terrorizing and do whatever you want.” He was also keen to see how the overarching storyline of the series progresses. In a new approach used in GTA 5, gamers take on the roles of three different main characters whose paths eventually merge.
“This really is a blockbuster that almost dwarfs the movies in some way,” Houlihan said. “GTA V is really a cultural phenomenon.” Houlihan said it was rumored that the production budget for the game was in the vicinity of $270 million.
The franchise’s appeal is fueled by captivating story lines and an open-world format that lets players go wherever they wish in game worlds.
“You can rob banks or you can do a yoga lesson or you can fly a plane or you can play tennis or you can do what I sometimes do, which is just wander round the world in a really flashy car and listen to some of the hilarious radio stations — so there really is everything for you to explore, it’s a world of possibility,” Houlihan said.
The game will also let people play with or against one another online.
Rockstar, which is owned by Take-Two Interactive, said that GTA V “focuses on the pursuit of the almighty dollar” in a re-imagined Southern California.
Grand Theft Auto IV blew away video game and Hollywood records by raking in an unprecedented $500 million in the week after its release in 2008.
“GTA is the 10-ton gorilla of video game franchises,” Steinberg said. “Obviously, this is going to help kick-start the holiday season for the videogame industry, which has taken a beating.” While console video games have faced mounting pressure from free-to-play titles tailored for smartphones or tablets, there is “still room for blockbuster Hollywood-style games,” according to the analyst.
’Grand Theft Auto V’ hits streets in brash debut
’Grand Theft Auto V’ hits streets in brash debut
Pakistan forms committee to tackle possible economic fallout of Israel-Iran conflict — adviser
- Oil prices jump 7 percent on fears of disrupted Middle East exports
- Analysts warn of economic and security risks for Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has formed a high-level committee led by the finance minister to monitor any possible economic impact of the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran, a senior government adviser said on Sunday, as rising oil prices threaten to add new pressure on the South Asian nation’s fragile economy.
Oil prices have climbed about 7 percent since Friday, with Brent crude closing at $74.23 a barrel after hitting a session high of $78.50, amid fears of supply disruptions if Middle East tensions escalate further.
“The prime minister has constituted a committee under the supervision of the finance minister, which will monitor the situation,” Khurram Schehzad, an adviser at the finance ministry, told Arab News.
“The committee will assess the impact of the changes and volatility in oil prices on fiscal and external sides, and devise a strategy to pacify the impacts on Pakistan’s economy.”
Pakistan relies heavily on imported oil, and any sustained spike in prices could widen its current account deficit and push inflation higher at a time when the country is struggling with low foreign reserves and slow growth.
Israel and Iran launched fresh attacks on each other overnight into Sunday, killing scores. The conflict started on Friday when Israel launched a massive wave of attacks targeting Iranian nuclear and military facilities but also hitting residential areas, sparking retaliation and fears of a broader regional conflict.
A 909 kilometer (565 mile) long international boundary separates Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province from Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province.
“Israel-Iran conflict presents complex challenges for Pakistan as rising oil prices may increase import costs and inflation, influencing monetary policy and growth, while disruptions to key routes like the Strait of Hormuz can affect energy supplies and critical projects,” said Khaqan Najeeb, an economist and former finance ministry adviser.
“It can potentially affect consumer purchasing power and production costs ... Possible disruptions to shipping routes and higher freight charges might result in delays to imports and exports, thereby exerting additional pressure on Pakistan’s external sector.”
DIPLOMATIC BALANCING
As the crisis deepens, analysts widely believe Islamabad should maintain “careful diplomatic balancing” between its ties with Iran and its other partners in the Gulf, as well as the United States.
“Diplomatically, Pakistan has to navigate a balanced and principled stance, honoring its historic ties with Iran alongside its strategic relationships with the US and Gulf partners, emphasizing dialogue and regional stability.”
Former Defense Secretary Lt Gen (retired) Naeem Lodhi said Israel was unlikely to target Pakistan directly but an expanding conflict could complicate matters for Islamabad, adding that it should remain vigilant but avoid “deeper” involvement.
“If the war expands to include more Middle Eastern countries, some of which are friendly to Pakistan, then it would be a difficult proposition for Islamabad... whose side it takes,” Lodhi added.
Former Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry said Pakistan would respond “forcefully” if directly targeted.
“Israel knows that Pakistan has the capacity to hit back hard,” Chaudhry said, referring to a May 2025 military confrontation with India in which Islamabad retaliated to New Delhi’s strikes, taking down fighter jets and hitting airfields, air bases and other military facilities.
Pakistan’s former ambassador to Iran, Asif Durrani, warned that the crisis could spill over if not contained.
“Not only Pakistan, but the entire Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region can be engulfed if the ongoing spat between Israel and Iran turns into an all-out war,” Durrani said.
However, he said the likelihood of a refugee crisis was limited unless the conflict escalated into a ground invasion.
“A refugee influx is possible if it becomes a full-fledged war, but Israel or the United States are unlikely to commit boots on the ground in Iran,” Durrani added.
Qamar Cheema, executive director of the Sanober Institute think tank, said Pakistani security forces should increase patrols and surveillance in border districts as the conflict could impact militant groups operating along the Iran-Pakistan border region, such as Baloch separatists and other sectarian outfits.
“Whenever such a situation arises, separatist and sectarian outfits often try to take advantage of it, either by increasing their activities or by shifting them from their hideouts inside Iranian territories,” he said.
“Their movement is likely to intensify if the threat reaches the border region.”
Two killed, 32 injured after bridge collapses at tourist destination in India’s Maharashtra
- Incident occurred in Kundamala area in Pune district, which has witnessed heavy rains over the past few days
- It was not raining when the bridge collapsed in an area frequented by picnickers, PTI news agency reported
NEW DELHI: At least two people died and 32 others were injured after an iron bridge over a river collapsed at a popular tourist destination in India’s western Maharashtra state, the state’s top elected official said Sunday.
At least six people were rescued and hospitalized in critical condition, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis wrote on social media platform X.
The incident occurred in Kundamala area in Pune district, which has witnessed heavy rains over the past few days, giving the river a steady flow, Press Trust of India reported.
It was not raining when the bridge collapsed in an area frequented by picnickers, the news agency reported.
Police said teams of the National Disaster Response Force and other search and recovery units have undertaken rescue operations, Press Trust reported.
Rescue work at the scene has been accelerated, Fadnavis said.
Saudi artist Ahaad Alamoudi presents ‘The Social Health Club’ in Basel
RIYADH: This month, Saudi artist Ahaad Alamoudi is turning up the heat at Basel Social Club — which runs until June 21 in the Swiss city — with her latest installation, “The Social Health Club.”
Freshly conceived, but rooted in the artist’s past works, the yellow-drenched installation offers a layered, sensory experience — and sharp cultural commentary — as well as a first for the artist: a live-performance element.
Jeddah-based Alamoudi is known for creating immersive multimedia installations drawing from and exploring the complex dynamics of her evolving homeland. “The Social Health Club” is built around pieces found in Jeddah’s Haraj market in 2018 — a range of exercise equipment including a rowing machine.
“These are pieces I collected from thrifting. I like the fact that no instructions came with the machines — I don’t have their name or the source of where they came from or who made them. But they’ve become part of the urban landscape that I’ve been in. And I was trying to create fun within the space,” Alamoudi told Arab News.
In “The Social Health Club,” the equipment, painted predominantly in vibrantly-saturated monochrome yellow, stands untouched, serving as symbols of a culture obsessed with self-optimization. At the core of the installation is a cameo from a yellow-painted iron previously featured in her 2020 video work “Makwah Man.” (Makwah means iron in Arabic.)
“A lot of my pieces stem from a narrative I create within a video. In ‘Makwah Man,’ this man wearing a yellow thobe is ironing a long piece of yellow fabric in the middle of the desert. And as he’s ironing, he tells us how to live our lives. But in the process of him telling us how to live our lives, he also starts questioning his own in the process — understanding the role of power, understanding the pressure of change, adaptation,” Alamoudi explained.
“The yellow exists within the video piece, but he’s also wearing yellow thobe in the video piece. And (in this iteration at Art Basel) there’s also a rack of yellow thobes twirling in the exhibition. For me, the yellow thobe is like a unifying symbol. I’m trying to say that we’re all experiencing this in different ways. So in the performance (for “The Social Health Club”) a man (a local body builder) in a yellow thobe will be performing on these machines. He has no rule book. He doesn’t know anything; he doesn’t know how to ‘properly’ use the equipment. He’s going to go into the space and do things with the machines.
“The performance will be recorded. But I think it’s more like an activation,” she continued. “It’s not the piece itself. The piece itself exists as the machines.”
“The Social Health Club” was shaped through close collaboration with curator Amal Khalaf, who combed Jeddah’s market with Alamoudi in search of “machines that were a little bit abnormal, like not your typical machines that people would directly know what it is in the gym,” Alamoudi said.
“She’s quite incredible,” she continued. “And we really built the space together. Essentially, the main thing that I created was the video; everything else was built off of that. She really helped. She really looked at social change and how we navigate that. Our collaboration was perfect.”
Yellow dominates every inch of the piece—deliberately and intensely.
“I obsess over symbols within certain works I create. And with that also comes a color,” Alamoudi said. “I wanted to showcase something that was luxurious, colorful, almost like gold, but it’s not gold. It’s quite stark in its appearance.”
Yellow is both invitation and warning. “I think that yellow is also quite deceptive. I like it as a color to get people excited to come closer and see what’s happening, but at the same time question what it is — it’s so aggressive that it becomes a bit uncomfortable.”
The viewer’s interaction is critical to the piece’s meaning.
“I think the machines represent something and they carry something, but they really are activated by the people — what people are doing with them,” Alamoudi said. “And that’s why I’m encouraging a lot of viewers to engage with and use the pieces, or try to use them without any instruction. A lot of people entering into the space (might) fear even touching or engaging with them. Having the performer there activating the structures is going to add another layer to the piece itself.”
She hopes visitors feel free to explore, unburdened by expectations.
“People are meant to use it any way that they want to use it. They can sit on it, stand on it, touch it — they can leave it alone,” she concluded with a laugh.
Ukraine’s Sumy region on edge as Russian advance closes in
- Ukraine held swathes of the territory for eight months, until a spring offensive by Russian forces supported by North Korean troops pushed them back
STETS’KIVKA: Despite the driving rain, a few elderly residents wander into the streets of Stetskivka in northeast Ukraine to catch a yellow bus to go shopping in nearby Sumy, the regional capital.
They are worried about the Russian drones that have been striking the area with increasing regularity, more than three years into Moscow’s invasion.
“I’m afraid. Nobody knows what could happen to the bus we take,” Galyna Golovko, 69, told AFP at the small shop she runs near the bus stop.
Golovko said she never goes out in the morning or evening when Russian drones criss-cross the sky.
“It’s scary how many drones fly in the morning.... In the morning and in the evening it’s just hell,” she said.
The border with the neighboring Russian region of Kursk is just 17 kilometers (11 miles) away.
The Sumy region was the starting point for a Ukrainian incursion into Kursk last year.
Ukraine held swathes of the territory for eight months, until a spring offensive by Russian forces supported by North Korean troops pushed them back.
Moscow has since advanced toward the city of Sumy, taking several villages along the way and forcing mandatory evacuations of civilian residents.
At the Stetskivka bus stop, an elderly woman said she had packed up in case Russian troops arrive in town, where Ukrainian soldiers have replaced a pre-war population of 5,500 people.
The town is just 10 kilometers from the front line, and residents said there is heavy fighting nearby.
Beyond Stetskivka, “everything has been destroyed, there is not a single village,” Golovko said.
On her shop counter, there was a plastic box with a few banknotes — donations for a local family that lost its home, destroyed by a Russian glide bomb.
Ten kilometers to the south lies Sumy, a city that had 255,000 inhabitants before the war.
So far, restaurants are crowded and there seems little concern about the Russian advance.
But buildings in the city bear the scars of Russian bombardments.
And, when the sounds of car horns go down in the evenings, explosions can be heard in the distance.
The streets are lined with concrete bunkers against the increasingly frequent strikes from Russia, which has said it wants to set up a “buffer zone” to prevent future Ukrainian incursions.
“The enemy is trying to advance,” said Anvar, commander of the drone battalion of the 225th regiment, which is leading the defense of the region.
“We are pushing them back. Sometimes we advance, sometimes they do,” he told AFP in an apartment that serves as a base for his unit.
“We still have troops in the Kursk region. Nobody has tried to drive them out,” he said, calling the conflict in the region a “war of positions.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said the Russian offensive in Sumy had been stopped, just a day after Russian forces said they had captured another village in the region.
Sitting next to Anvar, one of his men soldered microprocessors in silence, except for electronic clicking that made the room feel like a laboratory.
Surrounded by 3D printers and piles of batteries, the members of the brigade are busy transforming Chinese drones into flying weapons.
“It is now a drone war,” the commander said.
Anvar said that Russia was continually sending “cannon fodder” along this part of the front to try and overwhelm Ukrainian troops.
“I know people who have gone mad because of the number of people they manage to kill in a day.”
Russian soldiers “continue marching calmly” amid the bodies of their fallen comrades, he said.
In Stetskivka, Golovko voiced confidence that Ukrainian soldiers would hold the line and said she was “not going anywhere.”
“I will stay at home,” she said tearfully, beating the counter with her fist.
“I have traveled to Russia. We have friends there, and relatives. Everything was fine before.
“One day, this madness will end. The madness that Putin unleashed will end,” she said in a shaky voice.
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Oman residential property prices jump 7.3% in Q1 on land demand
- Jump driven by 6.5% rise in residential land prices
- Apartment prices rose 17% in May, while villas gained 6.4%
RIYADH: Oman’s residential property prices climbed 7.3 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2025, led by a sharp increase in residential land values, official figures showed.
According to data from the National Center for Statistics and Information, the jump was driven by a 6.5 percent rise in residential land prices, which form the largest component of the real estate index.
The gain reflects a broader regional upswing in property activity during early 2025. In the Kingdom, residential property prices rose 4.3 percent in the first quarter. The UAE continued to post strong gains, with Dubai prices climbing 16.5 percent and Abu Dhabi villa prices increasing 4.4 percent over the same period. In Qatar, real estate transactions reached 1.27 billion Qatari riyals ($350 million) in March alone.
Oman is working to ramp up housing supply as part of its Vision 2040 strategy, aiming to deliver 62,800 new residential units by 2030. Some 5,500 of these are expected to hit the market in 2025, according to consultancy Cavendish Maxwell.
NCSI data also showed strong momentum within individual property types. Apartment prices rose 17 percent in May, while villas gained 6.4 percent, and prices for other residential units increased 2.2 percent. The overall residential real estate price index grew 5.5 percent quarter on quarter in the first three months.
On an annual basis, land prices climbed 5.5 percent, apartment prices rose 4.3 percent, and villa prices increased 4.5 percent. Other home types saw the steepest gains, rising 13.4 percent compared to the same period last year.
At the governorate level, Muscat led the price growth with a 17.4 percent increase in residential land values year on year in the first quarter. Musandam followed with a 12.8 percent rise, while Al-Batinah North and South recorded gains of 7.3 percent and 6.1 percent, respectively. Dhofar and Ash Sharqiyah South posted more moderate increases.
However, the gains were not uniform across the country. Al Buraimi saw residential land prices plummet 35.1 percent, followed by declines in Al Dhahirah at 25.3 percent, Al Wusta at 20.4 percent, Ad Dakhiliyah at 3.7 percent, and Ash Sharqiyah North at 0.8 percent.
Oman’s real estate market ended 2024 on a strong note, with total transaction values rising 28.1 percent year on year to 3.13 billion Omani rials ($8.13 billion) by November, according to NCSI.
In a bid to attract foreign capital and stimulate development, the sultanate has rolled out a series of reforms, including relaxed ownership restrictions for non-citizens and new tax incentives aimed at boosting investor confidence.
