The British television network ITV News is to open a bureau in Dubai, according to a report in The Guardian.
The new hub will be headed by John Irvine, former Washington correspondent at ITV. Irvine will cover stories across the Indian subcontinent, Africa and the Gulf region, the paper said.
"The strategic decision to open the Dubai bureau will improve our longer-term newsgathering and ability to get teams on the ground for breaking stories in a wide area from Pakistan to Southern Africa," ITV News deputy editor, Jonathan Munro, told The Guardian.
ITV News is the latest contender in the Middle East's increasingly crowded news market. Sky News has a correspondent in Dubai; last year CNN opened a hub in Abu Dhabi.
There is also more competition in Arabic news: Last month it emerged that Sky News is in talks to broadcast a 24-hour rolling news
service in Arabic, based in Abu Dhabi. Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed also has plans to launch a 24-hour Arabic-language news channel.