SOFTWARE
Windows 8 may be unsafe
A German government technology agency has warned that new security technology in computers running Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system may actually make PCs more vulnerable to cyberthreats, including sabotage. Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security, or BSI, said in a statement on Wednesday that federal government agencies and critical infrastructure operators should pay particular attention to the risk. The agency said the problem is with the use of a computer chip known as the Trusted Platform Module, or TPM 2.0, which is built into Windows 8 computers. It said the joint implementation of Windows 8 and TPM 2.0 chips could lead to “a loss of control” over both the operating system and hardware, without specifying how that could occur.
ENERGY
S Africa mulls exploration
South Africa may start exploration for shale gas before elections in April next year, the trade minister said on Thursday. “We need to advance the work on taking a decision on shale gas exploration,” said Minister of Trade and Industry Rob Davies, almost a year after lifting a freeze. “We want to move before the end of this administration.” The current government’s term ends in April. The country’s semi-desert Karoo region potentially has one of the world’s largest untapped shale fields. The reserves are perhaps even larger than those of its neighbor Mozambique, Davies said, after massive discoveries there in the past three years.
FOOD
Fonterra shuts plant
New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra temporarily shut down its operations in Sri Lanka yesterday, saying it feared for the safety of staff amid allegations of product contamination. The move was sparked in part by a protest outside one of its Sri Lankan factories on Thursday, which attracted about 200 people, the company said. Fonterra, center of an unrelated botulism scare earlier this month that led to global recalls, said the shutdown was “to protect our people and farmers’ assets.”
ENERGY
Technip wins Shell contract
French firm Technip will lay the world’s deepest gas pipeline for energy giant Shell in the US Gulf of Mexico, the oil services company said in a statement yesterday. The company said it was awarded “an important engineering, procurement and installation contract for the development of subsea infrastructure for the Stones field,” at a depth of approximately 2,900m. The project will be the deepest floating, production, storage and offloading unit in the world and Shell’s first in the Gulf of Mexico, Technip said, without specifying how much the contract was worth.
BANKING
ABN Amro Q2 profit up
ABN Amro NV, the bank that was nationalized by the Dutch government so it would not go bust in 2008, yesterday said second-quarter profit rose slightly after one-off impairments were not as high as a year earlier. Net profit was 402 million euros (US$537 million), up from 337 million euros in the same period last year. However, CEO Gerrit Zalm warned that bad loans were rising because of the Dutch recession, which has now passed the one-year mark. He said small businesses were suffering the most. Consumers are spending less, but saving more, which is bad for businesses, but retail savings provide a cheap form of funding for ABN, helping interest margins.
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