TRADE
FTA may restrict drugs
Activists yesterday warned that a free-trade agreement (FTA) being negotiated by the US and 11 Asia-Pacific nations would impose aggressive intellectual property rules that restrict access to affordable medicines in developing nations. Nations negotiating the pact will hold an 18th round of talks in Malaysia from July 15, with a goal of completing negotiations by October. Fifa Rahman, from the Malaysian AIDS Council, said talks have been held in secret, but leaked drafts of the agreement show Washington has proposed a tough intellectual property regime that will enhance patent and data protections for pharmaceutical companies and obstruct competition from cheaper generic versions of drugs. Doctors Without Borders yesterday said the pact could set damaging precedents with serious implications for developing nations.
BANKING
S&P revises bank ratings
Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services (S&P) on Tuesday lowered the long-term counterparty credit ratings of Barclays Bank PLC, Credit Suisse AG and Deutsche Bank AG to “A” from “A-plus.” The agency kept its “A/A-1” long and short-term ratings on Switzerland’s UBS AG. All remain at investment grade, and their outlook is stable, S&P said. “We see increasing risks for some large Europe-based banks operating in investment banking, as regulators and uncertain market conditions make operating in the industry more difficult,” S&P said.
GAMING
Ubisoft warns of hackers
Video game titan Ubisoft on Tuesday warned that hackers swiped names, e-mail addresses and other information about users of its online gaming community. “We recently found that one of our websites was exploited to gain unauthorized access to some of our online systems,” the France-based company said in a message to members of its Uplay service. “We learned that data had been illegally accessed from our account database, including user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords.” Ubisoft said that it sealed the breach to its system and that no credit card or other payment information was stolen. Ubisoft urged players to change their passwords.
ELECTRONICS
Ex-Olympus execs convicted
A Tokyo court has convicted Olympus Corp’s former president and two executives for covering up massive investment losses at the Japanese camera and medical equipment company. The Tokyo District Court yesterday said that Tsuyoshi Kikukawa and two others were guilty of violating securities laws and falsifying financial statements. The court ordered prison terms of three years to Kikukawa and an auditor, and two-and-half years to a third executive — all suspended up to five years, meaning they will not be jailed. Olympus was fined ¥700 million (US$7 million).
JEWELRY
Ex-Tiffany VP arrested
A former executive of iconic New York jewelry store Tiffany was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly stealing more than US$1 million in valuables which she later resold, federal prosecutors said. Ingrid Lederhaas-Okun, Tiffany’s former vice president of product development, is suspected of swiping 165 items of jewelry between November last year and February this year, when she left the firm. The 46-year-old later allegedly sold the haul to another jeweler for US$1.3 million, claiming the property as her own. Lederhaas-Okun could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
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