Global economic superpowers China and the US remain engaged in tense trade negotiations - although the threat of an all-out trade war between Washington and Beijing now appears to have been avoided. Relations appear to have now improved somewhat following a series of recent discussions and talks between representatives from both the United States and China and there now appears to be real hope that the issues at hand will be resolved in an amicable and fair manner.

Read more: Did China ‘trump’ the US in trade talks?

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has launched a campaign aiming at the development of the content of the official portal of the UAE Government (Government.ae). The campaign started in the first week of May and is open to all sections of the public, government entities and private sector establishments.

Read more: TRA launches campaign which allows users to help develop government portal

Ten years ago, in April 2008, renowned San Diego-based chipset maker Qualcomm Incorporated announced its expansion into the Middle East and Africa. The ambitious city of Dubai was chosen as Qualcomm's regional hub, where an office was opened in Dubai Internet City (DIC) Free Trade Zone to serve the company's business interests. Ten years on, Telecom Review reflects on Qualcomm's role in influencing new technologies in the region.

Read more: Qualcomm’s 10th year anniversary in the region

Bahrain's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, along with Batelco and Avaya, has transformed the ministry's communications and collaboration capabilities, with a strategic ICT implementation to connect all ministry employees around the world. The ministry worked closely with Avaya to transform its citizen services by integrating and digitalizing its communications and collaboration capabilities through a two-phased project.

Read more: GCC country unveils the details of its digital transformation project

Only 1 percent of CIOs indicated any kind of blockchain adoption within their organizations, and only 8 percent of CIOs were in short-term planning or active experimentation with blockchain, according to Gartner's 2018 CIO Survey. Furthermore, 77 percent of CIOs surveyed said their organization has no interest in the technology and/or no action planned to investigate or develop it.

Read more: Survey reveals that deployment of blockchain is massively ‘overhyped’

Youth in the Middle East and North Africa expect the Fourth Industrial Revolution to significantly impact their lives, while many are comfortable living in a future where robots exist alongside humans, according to the World Economic Forum's Global Shaper Survey 2017. The Middle East is embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution - a movement that is expected to add over $266 billion to the Saudi economy.

Read more: UAE and KSA embrace Fourth Industrial Revolution

Data protection has made the headlines following the recent Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal which revealed that the personal data of millions of people was harvested from Facebook and shared with the political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica. The scandal coincided with the announcement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union after four years of preparation and negotiations. What is GDPR exactly and what impact will it have in Europe and internationally?

Read more: The EU Global Data Protection Regulation dilemma

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