BEACON

At the behest of Google, the Obama administration is reviewing the options of complaining to the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the Chinese censorship of Google Inc., the search engine powerhouse and other affected companies. The alleged Chinese action is believed to have infringed upon the WTO laws which provided a level playing field for [...]

The current mobile phone finance players and aspiring entrants are vying among one another to extract a higher share of the future market of mobile payments, the latest mode of payment among migrant workers, by joining forces with current mobile telephony providers of the Asian and African region. Several mobile payment firms are reported to [...]

Based on the last month’s report on El Nino by the US Climate Prediction Center, the global rice production as well as other food products will be drastically impacted by the ongoing climatic phenomenon. El Nino, characterized by a warming of the equatorial Pacific, brings increased rain to the South American region and drought or [...]

China’s Administration for Industry and Commerce will soon keep tabs on its online businesses to check fraud and generate revenue through one of the country’s fastest growing industries. A new proposal which is expected to be rolled out by mid-March this year will force entrepreneurs of online stores to register and pay tax.
According to sources, [...]

The trade ministers of an alliance of Latin American Countries (ALBA) will meet today to discuss the operational launch of a regional electronic currency. In last April, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the leftist leaders of the region agreed to minimize the US dollar dependence by launching a Latin American currency styled in line with [...]

The International Trade Centre (ITC) has launched a comprehensive, interactive trilingual online version of its Cotton Exporter’s Guide as an outreach to improve the skills and abilities of developing countries in cotton trading and marketing. The ITC’s latest press release stated the new online initiative featured an open source content management platform that will enable [...]

The snow storm that crippled the US during the final shopping weekend on December 19 and 20 became a blessing in disguise for e-commerce businesses as the total online sales recorded 13 percent growth compared to the same period last year. This was reported in the latest press release of comScore, a firm that evaluates [...]

It is evident now that the two decades of a law to ban poaching of elephants has done very little to stop illegal trade of ivory which is going on unabated particularly in Africa, and many other parts of the world. According to the International Fund for Wildlife Welfare (IFWW), a staggering 38,000 elephants are [...]

Palestinian Customs in partnership with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) had fully adopted the latest version of ASYCUDA’s web-based application to expedite the international trade processes of its country, said the UNCTAD press release. ASYCUDA, the Automated System for Customs Data is a software designed to strengthen Customs administrations across the [...]

South Korea is planning to popularize the domestic e-trade initiative called uTradeHub among international traders, and for which the government has already approached Libya, Uzbekistan, Mongolia and Romania. The uTradeHub system is the first operational e-commerce platform in the world created to facilitate paperless documentation in trade ranging from marketing to logistics through a single [...]