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Eagle Hills eyes 2027 construction start on $20 billion Maldives project

For thousands of Maldivian families, a $20 billion Maldives project now stands between where they live today and a new home by

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Tesla Cybertruck into the Luxury Segment
  • Tesla Inc.

The move to push the Tesla Cybertruck into the luxury segment arrived this week as a price increase, not the discount a slow-selling product usually gets. On Tuesday, Tesla lifted the sticker price of two trims by $5,000 each. The base Dual Motor now starts at $74,990, up from $69,990. Premium All-Wheel Drive rose to $84,990 from $79,990. The Cyberbeast held at $99,990. Tesla made the change without an announcement, and new numbers simply appeared on the order page.

A Tesla Cybertruck price increase against falling sales

That Tesla Cybertruck price increase runs against the direction sales have taken. Cox Automotive estimates Tesla sold 7,263 Cybertrucks in the US during the first half of 2026, down 32.2% from the same period a year earlier. Tesla does not report Cybertruck deliveries on its own, so third-party counts fill the gap. The figure sits far below the 250,000 annual deliveries CEO Elon Musk once said the truck could reach.

Pushing the Tesla Cybertruck into the luxury segment

Seth Goldstein, a Morningstar analyst, said the higher prices could help Tesla offset rising material costs and protect its margins as it plans for lower volumes. Rather than chase mass-market numbers, Goldstein said the company looks ready to keep the truck as a lower-volume luxury vehicle whose odd design can command a premium. Moving the Tesla Cybertruck into the luxury segment fits a wider shift at the automaker. Earlier this year, Tesla ended production of the Model S sedan and the Model X SUV, its two established premium cars. Their exit left a gap at the top of the range. The pickup now carries that premium role, priced for buyers who want something rare rather than cheap.

The Cybertruck Dual Motor price tells part of the story. That base trim launched in February 2026 at $59,990 as a short promotion, then climbed to $69,990, and now sits at $74,990. Its path adds $15,000 in roughly six months for the same vehicle. Buyers have learned to read any Tesla figure as temporary. This Cybertruck price hike also stands out because the Cyberbeast avoided it. The Cybertruck Cyberbeast price stayed at $99,990, at least for now.

Where Tesla Cybertruck sales 2026 stand

Tesla Cybertruck sales in 2026 have run below the company’s early hopes. Most electric pickups have slipped this year, with the Chevrolet Silverado EV down by a similar share near 32.5%, while the GMC Sierra EV managed a small gain. Pricing that shifts from week to week gives fleet buyers little reason to commit. Resale value adds to the caution, since early Foundation Series trucks that once resold above $150,000 now trade for far less. Steering the Tesla Cybertruck into the luxury segment accepts these limits. Tesla looks content to sell fewer trucks at higher margins rather than fight for volume it may not win.

A lineup sorted by margin

The pattern points to a company ranking its models by profit. Optimus robots and the Cybercab robotaxi now sit at the center of Tesla’s plans, and the pickup no longer needs to move in large numbers to hold its place. A higher price on a slower seller reads as a deliberate call about where the Cybertruck belongs.

  • 3 min read
Meta's Bombastic $17 Billion
  • META

Meta’s bombastic $17 billion settlement closes one of the largest child safety fights the tech industry has faced. The company agreed to pay $16.68 billion after 47 states and U.S. territories accused it of designing Instagram and Facebook to hook young users. State attorneys general said Meta built features meant to “entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens.” Meta denies wrongdoing. Still, the numbers tell their own story here.

Think of the child safety settlement as a bill for a decade of design choices. Executives built products that kept teens scrolling. Regulators decided that came at a price. That price now stretches across ten years of payments, plus a new rulebook for how Instagram and Facebook must treat anyone under 18.

New Limits Reshape Instagram and Facebook for Teens

Under the deal, under-18 users face a firm two-hour daily cap on Facebook and Instagram. Push notifications go dark during school hours. Access shuts off completely between midnight and 6 a.m. Age checks get tougher too, closing gaps that let younger kids slip past sign-up screens.

The Instagram and Facebook teen restrictions go further than time limits. Teen accounts will no longer show likes or other engagement counts. That single change targets a mechanism long tied to teen social media addiction lawsuit claims: the pull of watching a number climb. Strip away the number, and the pull weakens. Meta also agreed to tighten controls around content that promotes eating disorders or self-harm.

Regulators leaned hard on COPPA violations as part of their case. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act bars companies from collecting data on kids under 13 without parental consent. States alleged Meta gathered that data anyway, and that some of it fed machine learning and generative AI systems. That claim links Meta’s bombastic $17 billion settlement to a bigger question: how AI training pipelines treat data from underage users across the industry.

TikTok and YouTube Hold the Next $5 Billion

Here’s the twist. About $5 billion of the total stays locked unless TikTok and YouTube sign onto similar rules, including one-hour daily limits, nighttime curbs, and stronger age verification. Each platform would owe roughly $5 billion of its own if it joins.

Meta published an open letter urging both rivals to come aboard, arguing teens who get limited on one app simply hop to another. That’s a fair point. A single-platform curfew doesn’t mean much if the crowd moves next door anyway. Real TikTok and YouTube teen protections would need to land across the entire industry to change teen behavior at scale.

For now, Wall Street shrugged. Meta shares rose about 1 percent on the news, which suggests investors see this as a manageable cost rather than a real threat. Put that $17 billion against Meta’s $201 billion in 2025 revenue, and the settlement equals roughly 8.5 percent of one year’s sales. Spread over a decade, the yearly hit shrinks further.

Meta’s bombastic $17 billion settlement isn’t only about the check it writes. It’s the products it now has to rebuild. Time limits, curfews, hidden like counts, tougher age gates: these become permanent fixtures on two of the world’s largest social apps. Whether TikTok and YouTube follow will decide if this becomes an industry standard or stays a Meta-only fix.

  • 3 min read
Turkiye Exports to Islamic Countries
  • Trade

Turkey’s exports to Islamic countries reached $41.5 billion in the January to July period of 2026, according to figures released by the Trade Ministry on Monday. The total marks a rise of $345.7 million, or 0.8%, from the same period a year earlier. Growth was modest in percentage terms, but the underlying trade relationship with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation continues to widen.

Total foreign trade volume between Turkiye and OIC member states climbed 2.2% year over year to $69.2 billion over the same seven months. That figure includes both exports and imports, and it points to a broader commercial relationship than exports alone suggest. The ministry framed the numbers as part of a longer structural push rather than a single seasonal gain.

A strategy years in the making

The export growth sits inside a formal government plan. The Trade Ministry’s Strategy for Developing Exports with OIC Members is built into Turkiye’s 2026-2028 Medium-Term Program, and it sets a specific target. Ankara wants the share of OIC countries in Turkiye’s total exports to rise from 27% today to 30% by 2028. That is not a large jump in percentage points, but it represents billions of dollars in additional trade if achieved on the current export base.

To get there, the ministry studied the economic and commercial data of OIC members and picked out 21 countries for first-phase focus. The list spans Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Indonesia, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Qatar, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Egypt, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Senegal, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Jordan and Oman. These markets were chosen because ministry analysis flagged them as holding the strongest near-term commercial potential for Turkish exporters, based on existing trade patterns and demand signals in each economy.

The OIC itself provides the backdrop for why this matters at scale. Founded in 1969 to strengthen cooperation and solidarity among Islamic countries, the organization now counts 57 members. Together they represent close to a quarter of the world’s population, yet only about one-tenth of global income. That gap between population share and income share is the commercial opportunity Ankara’s strategy is built around.

A decade of steady expansion

Turkiye’s trade volume with OIC countries has followed a long upward path. It stood at $87.6 billion in 2013 and reached $119.1 billion by 2025, an increase of roughly 1.4 times over twelve years. That is gradual growth rather than a sudden surge, consistent with a trade relationship built on expanding market access and diplomatic engagement rather than one-off deals.

In 2025, three countries anchored Turkiye’s OIC trade. The United Arab Emirates led at about $19 billion, followed by Iraq at $14.3 billion. Egypt and Kazakhstan each accounted for roughly $7.9 billion. Those four relationships alone made up a substantial share of Turkiye’s total commercial activity with the OIC bloc last year.

Where 2026 gains concentrated

The first seven months of 2026 showed uneven movement across individual markets, with some countries posting sharp increases even as the overall growth rate stayed modest. Egypt recorded the largest rise in Turkish exports by value, climbing $522.2 million to reach $2.8 billion. Libya followed with an increase of $438.5 million, bringing its total to $2.2 billion.

Exports to Syria rose $296.8 million to $2.1 billion, a notable figure given the country’s ongoing reconstruction needs. Jordan rounded out the top gainers, with exports climbing $227.5 million to $1.3 billion. These four markets, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Jordan, drove much of the incremental growth in Turkiye’s exports to Islamic countries this year, even as the aggregate 0.8% rise reflects a more mixed picture across the full 21-country list.

The pattern fits the wider structural shift the ministry has been describing. Turkiye is not chasing volume in its largest existing markets alone. It is building depth across a broader set of economies, betting that population growth and rising income across the Muslim world will keep expanding demand for Turkish goods through the rest of this decade.

  • 4 min read
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