Iraqi trade has been damaged by $1 million USD in one day due to protests in southern cities and internet cuts in many provinces, the Baghdad Commerce Chamber has said.

The demonstrations in Basra have caused a decline in the volume of trade with Kuwait and Iran in the last several days, a member of Baghdad Commerce Chamber, Zyad Kaabi, said in a statement on Monday (July 17).

“They"...

Better spectrum pricing policies are needed in developing countries to improve the economic and social welfare of the billions of people that remain unconnected to mobile broadband services, according to a new report, ‘Spectrum Pricing in Developing Countries’, released by the GSMA today at the Mobile 360 – Africa conference in Kigali. The study reveals that spectrum prices in developing countries are, on average, more than three times higher than in developed countries, when income is taken into account."...

More than half the population of Sub-Saharan Africa will be subscribed to a mobile service by 2025, according to the latest edition of the GSMA’s Mobile Economy report series, published at the GSMA ‘Mobile 360 – Africa’ event being held in Kigali this week. The new report forecasts that there will be 634 million unique mobile subscribers1 across Sub-Saharan Africa by 2025, equivalent to 52 per cent of the population, up from 444 million (44 per cent) at the end of last year. The report also calculates"...

The Iraqi government has imposed a blockade on Facebook across the country in the wake of growing and violent protest in southern provinces.

The social media platform, which is the most popular in Iraq, has also been blocked in the Kurdistan Region while it remains safe and away from protests.

Iraq’s southern provinces, including Basra, Najaf, Karbala, Misan, Dhi"...

The rise of robots in manufacturing in Southeast Asia is likely to fuel modern slavery as workers who end up unemployed due to automation face abuses competing for a shrinking pool of low-paid jobs in a “race to the bottom”, analysts said.
Drastic job losses due to the growth of automation in the region — a hub for many manufacturing sectors from garments to vehicles — could produce a spike in labour abuses and slavery in global supply chains, said risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft.
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Jeff Bezos' rocket company plans to charge passengers about $200,000 to $300,000 for its first trips into space next year, two people familiar with its plans told Reuters.

Potential customers and the aerospace industry have been eager to learn the cost of a ticket on Blue Origin's New Shepard space vehicle, to find out if it is affordable and whether the company can generate enough demand to make a profit on space tourism.

Executives"...

Elliott Management Corporation said it was seeking compensation for at least $770m in damages from South Korea over how its former administration intervened in the merger of Samsung C&T Corporation and Cheil Industries in 2015.

Billionaire Paul Singer’s New York-based hedge fund said in a statement Friday it had submitted the dispute for arbitration and urged the government to pay the damages in order to preserve its reputation with international"...

Leading global satellite operators Intelsat S.A. (NYSE: I), SES (Euronext Paris: SESG) and Eutelsat (Euronext Paris: ETL) announced today that they are aligned on a market-based proposal for the future use of the lower C-band spectrum in the U.S. Eutelsat has agreed to join the breakthrough proposal initiated by Intelsat, Intel and SES.

The market-based proposal was developed in response to a proceeding initiated by the U.S. Federal Communications"...