Baghdad International Airport will open next month to commercial flights, a step that may speed the effort to jumpstart Iraq's economy, said Andrew Natsios, administrator for the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
"Sometime in July, they will open the airport for commercial flights," Natsios said in an interview during a meeting of the World Economic Forum at the Dead Sea resort near Amman, Jordan.
Seven weeks after the US and British military campaign to topple Saddam Hussein's government, USAID officials are shifting their priorities to practical steps that can help the economy quickly, Natsios said. Commercial air service is an example of a service that has become a high priority, he said.
"We cannot get people in the country. If you're not on a military flight or a humanitarian flight, how do you get in the country? How do we get businessmen in who want to start businesses?" Natsios said. "There are things that we did that are now taking greater importance."
Bahrain-based Gulf Air, Emirates and British Airways Plc are among the airlines considering flying to Baghdad airport, US officials said. The airport, damaged during the US-led invasion, is undergoing international certification.
Earlier this month, Northwest Airlines Corp, World Airways Inc and Kalitta Air LLC won tentative US permission to offer scheduled flights between the US and Iraq after a 13-year suspension of services between the countries.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained