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GENEVA / WAM The UAE, represented by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), chaired the annual meeting of the ITU Council Working Group on Child Online Protection (COP), at the ITU headquarters in Geneva. The meeting, chaired by the TRA’s Abdelaziz Al Zarooni, saw participants discuss the development of global COP guidelines and the exchange of experiences among Member States on …

Bloomberg Chinese officials are signaling they’re increasingly reluctant to agree to a broad trade deal pursued by President Donald Trump, ahead of negotiations this week that have raised hopes of a potential truce. In meetings with US visitors to Beijing, senior Chinese officials have indicated the range of topics they’re willing to discuss has narrowed considerably, according to people familiar …

Bloomberg China’s top six listed coal-power generators are failing to respond to climate change, lagging international peers and leaving them misaligned with Beijing’s broader environmental policies, according to a sustainability and governance risk consultant. That’s keeping shareholders without adequate information on how the firms are addressing climate change or adjusting their businesses to adapt, Singapore-based Asia Research & Engagement said …

Bloomberg South Africa wants coal producers to help debt-stricken state power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. tackle its skyrocketing costs of the fuel — a problem that’s largely of its own making. Eskom traditionally signed so-called “cost-plus” contracts for coal with mining companies that managed and operated shafts the utility helped finance. In 2015 then-Chief Executive Officer Brian Molefe criticized …

Bloomberg China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) is no longer a partner in Iran’s biggest natural gas project, and the Persian Gulf nation will develop Phase 11 of the giant South Pars field on its own, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said. CNPC was the only international partner left in the project, after Total SA of France withdrew last year when …

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc may eliminate as many as 10,000 jobs as part of a cost-cutting drive, according to a Financial Times report that signalled Europe may bear the brunt of the initiative. The plan would result in a substantial reduction in HSBC’s workforce of about 238,000, the FT said, citing two people briefed on the matter. The bank, one …

Bloomberg Euro-area stocks would stand to gain more from a Brexit deal by the end of this month than UK shares, JPMorgan Cazenove strategists said. While such a scenario would be bullish for domestic British companies, a strengthening of the pound would take away much of the upside for UK equities, strategists led by Mislav Matejka wrote in a note. …

Bloomberg A growing number of German banks are passing on negative interest rates to their retail customers as the costs become too high to bear on their own. Berliner Volksbank, the country’s second-largest cooperative lender, started to apply a minus 0.5% rate on deposits exceeding 100,000 euros ($110,000) in its first charge for retail clients. The move may encourage other …

Bloomberg It’s too early to bid farewell to the decade-long equity bull market as stocks are still providing healthy returns for investors, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. “Even with low profit growth the corporate sector has a high free-cash-flow yield and the dividend yield (plus buybacks) ought to still provide a reasonable relative return,” Peter Oppenheimer, Goldman’s chief global …

Bloomberg Greece’s government is forecasting 2.8% economic growth in 2020, which it says puts it on track to meet a budget target agreed with creditors while still enacting tax relief measures. The creditors, however, have warned that the cost of polices to which Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s government has committed will create a shortfall of up to 900 million euros …