opportunities

Glancing up from my chilli-prawn-laden pizza, I spot Declan Donnelly and his wife strolling into KOKO, our lunch spot in Portugal’s Quinta do Lago Resort.

It seems I’ve stumbled across people-watching heaven – this place is a playground for the rich and famous, with celebs including Niall Horan and Holly Willoughby also known to holiday here.

The setting is 15 minutes’ drive from Faro airport, where the landscape quickly transforms from rustic farmland to manicured streets, luxurious villas and luscious, green golf courses.

Designer-clad joggers take to the flower-lined paths, and sports cars meander down to the ocean.

If you didn’t know better, you could be driving through Palm Springs, not the Algarve.

My husband Grant and I have picked one of the more affordable stays – The Magnolia Hotel, a white villa designed like a ’50s motel, complete with illuminated sign and a kitsch, pastel interior.

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Our favourite spot here soon becomes the sparkling pool, surrounded by bird of paradise plants, and boasting cabanas and a Balearic beats soundtrack.

Each morning, we find an abundant buffet, including top-notch ingredients for a full English, plus fruit, yoghurts, pastries and cheeses.

But the pièce de résistance are the cooked-to-order banana and toffee pancakes. Double rooms here cost from £124 B&B (Themagnoliahotelqdl.com).

Quinta do Lago itself is more like a town, so we hop on the hotel’s complimentary bikes to The Campus, a 15-minute ride away, to meet Luke, our calm and collected padel coach.

By the end of our hour’s lesson, £70, we’ve mastered both a rebound backhand and a volley (Thecampusqdl.com).

The next morning, we hire mountain bikes from The Bike Shed, £45 per day, to explore the boardwalks lining the beautiful Ria Formosa Natural Reserve, and spy a purple heron and Eurasian oystercatchers on our ride down to the white-sand beaches.

Quinto do Lago Lake sits nearby with seafood eatery Casa do Lago and trendy tiki bar The Shack either side of the crystal-clear water.

After paddling around in kayaks, lapping up views of the mansions lining the lake, £18 for 30 minutes (Arturwatersports academy.pt), we head to the latter and gorge on zesty prawn tacos, £17.50, washed down with frozen margaritas, £12.

All of the resort’s restaurants are overseen by British executive chef Gareth Billington.

At Casa Velha, we share beef pica pau, a traditional Portuguese dish served in garlic gravy, £16.50, while the delicate sole at Casa do Lago, £37, paired with tomato salad and roasted potatoes, both £4.50, is a real treat and prepared at our table.

I head back to The Campus to work off some of our feasts at a Q Reformer Pilates 1-1 session, £48 for one hour, where instructor Pedro really challenges my strength and agility, before I’m tempted again at boutique cafe Pure.

Sipping on prosecco in the sun, with an afternoon tea spread of coronation chicken wraps, smoked salmon on toast, quiche and an array of home-made cakes, £33, I resolve to book a Reformer class back home.

Still, what’s life without a little cake?

Mukalla, Yemen – At the Mukalla Creative Hub, a man in a black T-shirt leans over a desk to help a colleague with his project, while other men remain fixed on their laptop screens. Nearby women sit in ergonomic office chairs, writing or scrolling on their phones. On the other side of the space in Yemen’s coastal city of Mukalla, a sleek cafe-style counter stands at the entrance, while colourful armchairs are neatly arranged and occupied by a few people working among rows of computers.

What draws entrepreneurs, remote freelancers, and students here is not just the stylish setting or uninterrupted electricity, but something far more essential: fast, reliable Starlink satellite internet.

“Four Starlink devices power the space, delivering speeds of 100 to 150 Mbps and allowing users to stay constantly connected,” Hamzah Bakhdar, a digital freelancer who also works at the hub, told Al Jazeera.

In a country where war has devastated telecommunications, eroded salaries and cut off remote areas, Starlink is helping create a small but growing digital workforce of designers, developers, teachers, and freelancers who can now work for clients abroad and earn far more than Yemen’s crumbling local economy would otherwise allow.

Internet access in Yemen has also been weaponised, with buried land cables sometimes cut, leaving parts of the country abruptly disconnected. The Houthi rebels, who are based in the Yemeni capital Sanaa and have fought the internationally recognised government since 2014, control the country’s major internet providers. That allows them to block websites they view as linked to their opponents inside and outside the country, including key platforms used by tech developers and remote workers.

The arrival of Starlink satellite internet has provided an alternative, allowing people to bypass the Houthis’ tight grip on telecommunications and stay online even in remote areas.

Mohammed Helmi, a video editor and motion graphics designer, was juggling projects for three clients in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the United States. Thanks to the fast internet at the cafe, he no longer worries about losing connection or missing deadlines, problems he said repeatedly disrupted his work in the past.

“In the past, when I downloaded files to my laptop, it would stop as soon as my data ran out,” Helmi, a young man with a thin moustache, told Al Jazeera at the cafe. “I had to buy another gigabyte and start the download all over again. Because of this, I often had to turn down projects.”

Control over the internet

Starlink is operated by billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, and delivers internet by linking a ground dish to low-orbit satellites owned and operated by the company.

While other satellite internet companies exist, and others are quickly entering the space, Starlink is the only low-orbit satellite internet service legally available in Yemen after the internationally recognised government signed an agreement with the company in September 2024.

But it’s not for everyone.

The kits cost about $500, a price that remains unaffordable for the vast majority of Yemenis, living in one of the poorest countries in the world, where more than 80 percent of people live below the poverty line.

Owning a dish is therefore still a distant dream for many Yemenis desperate to get online.

University students, like Mariam, a student at Hadramout University, says that even buying internet vouchers from local providers who resell Starlink access is beyond her reach – let alone purchasing a device herself.

“People are using vouchers because they cannot afford Starlink devices, whose prices are very high,” Mariam, who preferred to be identified only by her first name, told Al Jazeera.

The Houthis have also reacted aggressively to the arrival of Starlink, launching a campaign warning people against using the service and threatening legal action against anyone found in possession of the device.

They have accused the company of serving as a “US espionage agent” and said it posed “a major threat to national security”. Experts have worried that data gathered over Starlink’s internet service could be used for “intelligence gathering and economic exploitation“.

There are also concerns internationally over the concentration of satellite internet services and infrastructure in the hands of Starlink, particularly in light of Musk’s ownership, with the South African-born billionaire increasingly associating himself with far-right causes in the United States and Europe.

Connecting Yemen’s remote areas

But despite Houthi threats and the high cost of the devices by Yemeni standards, Starlink has spread across the country, reaching areas that had long been isolated.

Omer Banabelah, a mobile app developer, said that before Starlink arrived, a visit to his home village in Hadramout’s countryside meant disappearing from the digital world altogether. He could not make a phone call, let alone connect to the internet, leaving him anxious that clients would move on when their messages went unanswered. With Starlink now available in rural parts of the province, Banabelah said he no longer fears losing work every time he travels.

“I can reply to their messages anytime, from anywhere,” he told Al Jazeera. “Work that takes 10 minutes with Starlink could take an entire day without it.”

Similarly, Yemeni teachers, struggling with poor and delayed salaries that have stagnated for years, have also benefited from the spread of the internet service, which has allowed them to offer uninterrupted online classes and earn badly needed extra income.

Raja al-Dubae, a school director in Taiz, told Al Jazeera that her school began offering online classes based on the Yemeni curriculum to Yemeni students living abroad in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and China in 2023. It started with just 50 students, with teachers connecting through local networks.

But when internet traffic surged in the densely populated city each afternoon, the connections would collapse, forcing teachers to abandon classes mid-session.

“Teachers were often disconnected from their students, and by the time the internet stabilised, the next class had already begun, leaving them frustrated and unable to finish their lessons,” she said.

Al-Dubae said she initially rejected her nephew’s proposal to buy Starlink because of the high upfront cost, but now regrets the delay. Since installing the service, the number of students has climbed to more than 200, revenues have grown, and teachers have begun earning better additional pay.

“With Starlink, the internet is very fast and reaches every corner of the school,” she said. “Teachers no longer disconnect from their students. I never imagined it would make such a difference. Videos load quickly, we no longer turn away new applicants, and our reputation for fast internet has spread.”

For Yemenis who have grown used to Starlink’s high-speed internet, and the better incomes and business opportunities it has helped create, the worst-case scenario is a return to the slow, unreliable service of local networks.

“Go back to the headache of local networks? Perish the thought. We hope the service will continue to improve,” al-Dubae said, scoffing at the idea of reverting to local internet providers.

Helmi reacted similarly. “If Starlink were cut off, I would be devastated and forced back into the local market, which cannot cover my expenses or living costs,” he said, shifting in his seat and smiling at the thought. “I would need to take on three or four jobs just to match what I earn from a single project from abroad.”

The United Arab Emirates’ announcement of its withdrawal from OPEC and the OPEC+ alliance, effective May 1, 2026, represents a major strategic shift in the global energy market, with direct and significant implications for China, the world’s largest oil importer. The primary impact of this UAE withdrawal on China is the enhancement of Chinese energy security, as it will increase available supplies. The UAE will now be able to raise its production towards its target of 5 million barrels per day by 2027, without being bound by OPEC quotas. This expansion will provide China with a substantial and stable source of oil outside the constraints of production alliances. Furthermore, the UAE’s withdrawal from OPEC will impact China’s diversification policy, as China relies on imports to cover approximately 70% of its oil needs. The UAE’s departure will grant Beijing greater flexibility in purchasing from the spot market at potentially more competitive prices.

This also has a significant impact on import costs (prices) through prolonged downward pressure. The UAE’s increased oil production (up to 680,000 barrels per day above previous levels) is expected to put downward pressure on global Brent crude prices in the medium term (12-24 months), thus reducing China’s energy import bill. This could lead to short-term volatility, as, despite the potential benefit, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz (due to current regional tensions in April 2026) limits the immediate ability to capitalize on the UAE’s withdrawal from OPEC, since most of the UAE’s exports to China pass through this waterway.

China could benefit from the UAE’s withdrawal from OPEC by enhancing its capacity for financial and trade cooperation and expanding trade in local currencies, particularly the Chinese yuan. The UAE’s departure from OPEC could (facilitate the expansion of oil trade agreements) in rubles, rupees, and yuan, moving away from OPEC’s traditional dollar pricing. This aligns with China’s drive to internationalize the yuan. Such a move could boost joint investments, given China’s existing stakes in UAE oil concessions. With Abu Dhabi freed from restrictions, these Chinese investments could generate higher returns through increased production. Furthermore, China might leverage the UAE’s withdrawal from OPEC to bolster the strategic and geopolitical value of weakening OPEC’s influence. This withdrawal diminishes OPEC’s ability to control global supply, which benefits major consuming nations like China by reducing the likelihood of price shocks resulting from collective production cuts.

In this context, Chinese discussions and analyses have intensified, examining the potential benefits for China from the UAE’s withdrawal from OPEC. Chinese experts are analyzing the likelihood and impact of such a move should it materialize, particularly given the UAE’s increasing production capacity and its desire for greater flexibility. If we assume the UAE’s withdrawal from OPEC is indeed the case, China stands to be the biggest beneficiary for the following reasons. First, it would break the dominance of the petrodollar. The departure of a player the size of the UAE from traditional OPEC constraints opens the door wide to bilateral agreements for pricing oil in digital yuan (or Chinese yuan), thus supporting Beijing’s strategy of internationalizing the yuan to reduce its dependence on the Western financial system (SWIFT). In addition to the increased Chinese-Emirati supply, since Chinese companies such as CNPC and CNOOC hold stakes in oil concessions in Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s release from OPEC production quotas means these companies can increase production and secure China’s growing energy needs at preferential prices and with favorable terms. This facilitates the revitalization of joint UAE-China investments, allowing for deeper Chinese capital flow into the UAE’s refining and petrochemical sector. The exchange of finished goods and crude oil within an economic cycle based on local currencies reduces conversion costs and the risks associated with dollar fluctuations. This supports China’s policy of moving towards BRICS+. As the UAE is a member of the BRICS group, any move away from traditional OPEC frameworks aligns with the group’s overall direction to create a parallel financial system that supports the ruble, rupee, and yuan. This scenario, if it were to occur, would transform the relationship from one of buyer and seller to a comprehensive strategic partnership, making energy the driving force behind the new financial system that China seeks to lead.

Accordingly, the UAE’s withdrawal represents a strategic gain for China in terms of increased supply and potential cost reductions, but maximizing the benefit remains contingent on the stability of shipping lanes in the Arabian Gulf.