Business Daily

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made fresh allegations against Iran, adding to mounting pressure on the 2015 nuclear deal. What might be the impact on Iran, and for US and European businesses, if the agreement is ultimately scrapped?We hear from Iran itself and what the threat of fresh sanctions has done to the country's currency, the money in ordinary people's pockets, and their hopes for the future. But is the average Iranian actually better off since the lifting of sanctions three years ago? Ellie Geranmayeh, from the European Council on Foreign Relations, tells us the promised economic progress hasn't really materialised. One reason is that huge pressure is still being put on firms not to do business with Iran. Californian entrepreneur Honor Gunday, CEO and founder of online money transfer platform Paymentwall, says his firm received a surge of interest from the Islamic Republic after sanctions were lifted, but that he was warned off by US lobby organisations. We speak to one of those, Unite

The leaders of more than 40 African countries have signed a deal to create one of the world's largest free trade blocs, promising to bring prosperity to more than 1.2 billion people. But some of the continent's biggest economies, including Nigeria and South Africa, have so far refused to join. And with more than 80% of African trade currently done outside the continent, what impact will the new deal actually have in Africa?Some people on the streets of Kampala, Uganda, tell us they fear increased competition from neighbouring Kenya, and we ask Tonye Cole, billionaire co-founder of power and infrastructure giant Sahara Group, why his native Nigeria has decided not to take part.Plus, we hear words of optimism from Ghana's trade minister, Alan Kyerematen, and Arancha González, executive director of the International Trade Centre. (Picture: Workers at a clothing factory in South Africa. Credit: Rodger Bosch, Getty Images)

With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose more sanctions, Iran remains frozen out of much the international financial system despite the 2015 nuclear weapons deal.Ed Butler speaks to a British businessman who has plenty of would-be Iranian buyers of his oil equipment, but who cannot get paid into his UK bank account. Sanctions lawyer Nigel Kushner explains why most international banks still steer clear of Iran, despite the lifting of sanctions, plus Ellie Geranmayeh of think-tank the European Council on Foreign Relations explains the latest diplomatic rumblings.(Picture: Iranian rial banknotes, alongside US one dollar bills; Credit: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images)

How do designers and advertisers get people's attention when there is so much competition online? And how do brands get around ad-blocker software?Manuela Saragosa goes to the annual Design and Art Direction festival in London's Shoreditch to find out. She speaks to D&AD's Tim Lindsay, Trevor Eld of the Fader magazine, and photographer Perou. Meanwhile Andrew Geller and Isabella Parish of video production company 1st Avenue Machine take Manuela through a music video packed with optical illusions that they made with the band OK Go, and explain why it is so hard to be original these days. Plus Chris Moody of brand consultants Wolff Olins gives feedback on Business Daily's new logo.Producer: Laurence Knight(Picture: Photographer Perou and his models of being photographed at the D&AD festival; Credit: BBC)

Malaria continues to be one of the world's most destructive and widespread diseases, killing around 500,000 people each year, almost all of them in sub-Saharan Africa.On World Malaria Day we hear how it continues to cripple communities and speak to one Kenyan woman who lost a child to the disease. Ethiopia's former health minister, Dr Kesete Admasu, explains how outbreaks can have far-reaching economic consequences, depriving farms and other businesses of workers at vital times. He also describes his current work at Roll Back Malaria, a foundation aiming to tackle the disease through genetically engineered mosquitoes and new vaccines. Plus, Kenyan infectious disease specialist Dr Faith Osier tells us about another malaria vaccine she's working on, and we hear about the smartphone that could alert people when the breeds of mosquitoes that carry the disease are nearby.(Picture: A mother and her sick child during a malaria outbreak in DR Congo. Credit: John Wessels, Getty Images)

India's women workers have joined the global #MeToo movement, but there are signs it may be backfiring, with some company bosses afraid to hire women, for fear of sexual harassment claims. And that could be one of the reasons why the number of women participating in the workforce in India has fallen from 36% to 24% over the last ten years. Rahul Tandon reports from Kalkota. Deepa Narayan, author of Chup - the Hindi word for quiet - shares insights gained by her team, after speaking to 600 women about their experiences of sexism at work and in wider Indian society. Professor Heather McGregor from Edinburgh Business School talks about office life since #MeToo and says, at the very least, people are more aware of what kind of behaviour is unacceptable and are more confident in reporting incidents of harassment.(Picture: Women sit during a protest highlighting sexual crime in India. Credit: Money Sharma/Getty Images)

Donald Trump says tariffs on Chinese goods are necessary to 'protect American workers'. So who in the US might benefit from this action? Tennessee voted overwhelmingly for Mr Trump in 2016 and does more trade with China than any other US state. We hear from farmers facing Chinese tariffs on soy bean exports and a manufacturer worried about rising US steel prices. We also hear from Shelbyville, once called 'pencil city', where one of the last US pencil factories says its business has been damaged by cheap Chinese imports for decades. But is President Trump pointing the finger in the wrong direction when it comes to job losses? Calum Chace, author of The Economic Singularity and Our Jobless Future: An Essay on Artificial Intelligence and the Economic Singularity, says the decline in manufacturing has much more to do with automation than it does with China.(Picture: US President Donald Trump at the American Farm Bureau Federation's Annual Convention in Nashville, Tennessee. Credit: Jim Watson/Getty Images)

How much does your physical attractiveness affect your career prospects? And can the attention it draws be something of a mixed blessing?Vishala Sri-Pathma hears from British barrister Dr Charlotte Proudman about her personal experiences in what is a very male dominated profession. But while good looks may help you land a job, does it make it harder to get on with your colleagues? Vishala speaks to Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology at Manchester University, body language expert Judi James, and headhunter John Purcell.(Picture: Attractive businesswoman looks at camera with colleagues in background; Credit: Jacob Wackerhausen/Getty Images)

What happens if you are carrying out a high profile job, and then go public as transgender - for example switching from a "he" to a "she" or vice versa? Will your employer, colleagues and clients accept your new status? Manuela Saragosa speaks to Claire Birkenshaw, who did exactly that whilst working as a head teacher at a secondary school. She also hears from Beck Bailey of the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for LGBTQ rights, about the surprising progress among big US and multinational corporations in supporting transgender employees. Plus endocrinologist Maralyn Druce explains why, even when it comes to your biological sex, life isn't as binary as we often assume.Producer: Laurence Knight(Picture: Former head teacher Claire Birkenshaw; Credit: Claire Birkenshaw)

The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is keen to accelerate its path towards membership of the European Union. But there are obstacles too. Top of the list for the Balkans nation is resolving a dispute with its neighbour Greece over what the country calls itself. Our reporter Tanya Beckett has travelled to the capital Skopje to find out what's at stake. We also hear from the founder and chair of the UK Branding consultancy BrandCap, Rita Clifton, who tells us about some high-profile naming battles to secure corporate names and trademarks, reflecting on the sometimes extraordinarily high price companies will place on defending their named identity. PHOTO: Greeks protesting against Macedonian name. Credit: EPA

The missiles that struck Syria on Friday night have certainly shifted the international economic focus from China tariffs to new potential trade sanctions targeting Russian companies with ties to the Syrian president, Bashar al Assad. So how does this economic tit-for-tat play at a time when America is apparently preparing for economic war with China? We hear from Pippa Malmgren, head of the risk consultancy, the DPRM group in London and former economic adviser to President George W Bush in Washington. She believes that US President Trump does have a grand plan for international trade and foreign policy. To discuss China's place in the global pecking order, we turned to Professor Kishore Mahbubani, a veteran former diplomat from Singapore and former dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He argues that China will be soon on top and the West has failed to realise it. However, leading China-based economist, Michael Pettis from the Peking University told us he was skeptical that China would overtake t

Jaron Lanier is a pioneer of the modern internet and known as the "father" of Virtual Reality. But at the TED conference in Vancouver, Jane Wakefield hears why he thinks things have gone so badly wrong that there should be a mass deletion of social media, and the tech titans should start charging for their services.Jane also hears from Gizmodo's privacy expert Kashmir Hill about her experiment with turning her home into an internet-connected "smart-home" and the enormous amounts of data her devices produced, even as she slept. Plus Olga Yurkova, a Ukrainian journalist who set up the website StopFake to debunk fake news and propaganda, and Mikhail Zygar, a prominent Russian journalist who argues that the impact of fake news and Russian trolls is vastly over-stated. (Picture: Jaron Lanier speaking at TED2018; Credit: Bret Hartman/TED)

The cashless economy: Who are the winners and losers in the worldwide shift to digital payments?Rob Young hears from a grumpy pensioner in Sweden, a country that has blazed the way in ditching physical currency, as well as a Swedish expert on payment systems, Professor Niklas Arvidsson. Plus what difference has Narendra Modi's "demonetisation" policy of banning large denomination notes made to India's economy? Monika Halan, consulting editor at Indian financial newspaper Mint, gives her considered opinion. Meanwhile Rahul Tandon explains why Indians still don't know what Bitcoin is, even though they know they like it.(Picture: Indian farmer with daughter using mobile phone and credit card for online payment; Credit: triloks/Getty Images)

Ethiopia's economic growth has been hailed as a miracle by some, but it is a country deeply divided along the lines of ethnicity and wealth, and in recent years has been wracked by violence.New Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has made a public apology to the hundreds who have died and hundreds of thousands displaced, but will his words be enough to bring harmony?We hear from an Ethiopian medical student who fled to Yemen several months ago for fear of persecution, and ask Dr Awol Allo, a human rights lawyer and émigré from Ethiopia, about the reasons for the conflict, which prompted the government to declare a national state of emergency earlier this year. Ed Butler also visits a Chinese-built shoe factory south of the capital Addis Ababa to hear about pay and working conditions.Plus, what has been the international business reaction to the unrest? Has it deterred investment? We speak to Arusha Mehta, from clothing firm Goldmark Ltd, William Attwell from Frontier Strategy Group, and Zemenedeh Negatu, the Ethiopian-

As shares tumble and talk of regulation increases, we ask whether Facebook, Google and Amazon are facing a crisis.High-profile data breaches, falling user numbers and presidential questions over tax affairs have upped the pressure on these corporate giants in recent weeks. Bilal Hafeez, from the Japanese investment bank Nomura, tells us why he thinks their tech bubble is bursting.Another troubled tech firm, Uber, is under pressure once again - Jeremy Wagstaff tells us that this time it is from rivals in Southeast Asia. Plus, we take to the skies with real-life Iron Man Richard Browning, founder of tech start-up Gravity, who has set a world record in his jet-powered suit.(Picture: A man holding a smartphone showing Facebook's logo. Credit: Kirill Kudryavtsev, Getty Images.)

Does the world face a food crisis in the next 10 years? Or could the solution to world hunger already be at hand? Laurence Knight explores whether technological solutions like multi-storey indoor farms and self-driving tractors could help provide affordable food for everyone. Producer: Laurence Knight(Photo: Greens growing on floating beds. Credit: Mira Oberman/AFP/Getty Images)

Africa has the youngest population of any continent in the world and that figure is expected to double in less than 30 years. The BBC's Tamasin Ford travels across three countries to hear from young people about their hopes and dreams for their working lives. In Ghana, she talks to award winning actor and producer Yvonne Nelson. In Ivory Coast Tamasin hears from Edith Brou, CEO of her own Digital Agency, the Africa Content Group. And in Liberia, young people tell Tamasin about their hopes for the future in a country where youth unemployment is very high amongst the sixty percent of the population who are under 25.(Photo; Young men on the streets of Monrovia, Liberia. Credit: Tamasin Ford)

As the country prepares for elections, Ed Butler visits Sierra Leone to find out how people are feeling about the economy as it fights back following the devastating Ebola outbreak. Ed speaks to top politicians and also hears from ordinary people struggling to make a living. And he asks what happened to money donated to deal with Ebola victims, amid reports of corruption.(Picture: Children attending school on November 15, 2017 at the Old Skool Camp. Credit:SAIDU BAH/AFP/Getty Images)

Business Daily hears remarkable stories from Yemen's civil war. The tens of thousands of African economic migrants risking everything each year to travel into the world's worst humanitarian crisis. And the man who decided to start a coffee export business out of the very heart of the war-zone. Ed Butler talks to Mokhtar Alkhanshali from the Port of Mokha coffee company, humanitarian worker Rabih Sarieddine at the International Organization for Migration's office in the Yemeni port of Aden and journalist Iona Craig who's been reporting on Yemen for many years. The programme contains descriptions of kidnapping and violence. (picture: Yemeni tribesmen from the Popular Resistance Committees, keep watch at Nihm district, on the eastern edges of the capital Sanaa, on February 2, 2018. (Credit ABDULLAH AL-QADRY/AFP/Getty Images)

Are you saving for a rainy day? Eight of the world's major economies will between them have a joint shortfall of some $400 trillion in the next thirty years in terms of pension provision, according to the World Economic Forum. The assumption here is that most of us need about 70% of our working income to get by in our retirement years. But the shortfall they've come up with is a staggering 5 times the size of global stock markets. Luckily, Dan Ariely, a behavioural economist based at Duke University in the US, has been studying some of the simple human tricks that perhaps might nudge us towards a more prudent attitude.(Picture: Getty images)