PARIS: The President of the French agency in charge of regulating telecommunications ARCEP Sebastien Soriano (right) speaks as French Junior Minister for Digital Transition and Electronic Communication Cedric O (left) listens during their visit at the Swedish telecommunications equipment provider Ericsson’s research and development center on Thursday in Massy, near Paris. — AFP

WASHINGTON: The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits fell last week but remained at recession levels, while personal income dropped in August, underscoring the seed for another government rescue package for businesses and the unemployed.

SYDNEY: Australia will spend A$1.5 billion ($1 billion) to revitalize manufacturing across six sectors, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said, as the government pushes to get the economy out of the deep slump triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.

MEXICO CITY: Latin America’s e-commerce industry is booming as millions of shoppers across the region venture online during the pandemic, many for the first time, forcing traditional businesses to adapt to survive. 

NEW YORK: Workers from the beleaguered US airline industry were making a last-ditch public appeal this week to coax more money from Capitol Hill power brokers to save their jobs. The first day of October concludes the period when US carriers that received billions in aid from Congress promised to refrain from laying off workers.

UGHELLI, Delta State, Nigeria: Jonah Gbemre often has no electricity, but he says his home is permanently lit at night by the flames of waste gas being “flared” near his home town in Nigeria’s Delta State. 

HEGINS, Pa: Rick Bender, who owns a coal processing plant in Hegins, Pennsylvania, voted for Republican Donald Trump in 2016, in part because of his promise to revive the industry from a decade-long decline. 

DUBAI: Saudi Arabia’s economy shrank by 7 percent in the second quarter, a sign of how deeply the new coronavirus hit both the oil and non-oil sectors, while unemployment hit a record high of 15.4 percent, official data showed yesterday. 

PARIS: France yesterday began to auction off radio frequencies for the deployment of ultrafast 5G mobile technology, a process that will add billions of euros to the government’s depleted coffers.