ENERGY
Rosneft evades sanctions
Rosneft and British Petroleum (BP) signed an agreement on Saturday to jointly explore for hard-to-recover oil in Russia, the first major deal for the state-run Russian oil company since the West imposed sanctions over Ukraine in March. Rosneft is to hold 51 percent of the joint venture, which plans to explore the so-called Domanic formation. BP holds an almost 20 percent stake in Rosneft.
GERMANY
Arms export licenses falter
The country’s national security council declined two-thirds of applications for arms export licenses at its most recent sitting three weeks ago, newsweekly Der Spiegel said on Saturday. The economy ministry had prevented a license application to export to Saudi Arabia 500 million euros (US$681.6 million) worth of armored personnel carrier gunsights from being discussed in the council, it said. Der Spiegel said the sights were made by a unit of Airbus.
RETAIL
Amazon buries Hachette
Hachette Book Group apologized to its authors for a dispute with Amazon.com Inc that prompted the online retailer to block preorders for some of the publisher’s forthcoming book releases. “Please know that we are doing everything in our power to find a solution to this difficult situation, one that best serves our authors and their work, and that preserves our ability to survive and thrive as a strong and author-centric publishing company,” Hachette chief executive officer Michael Pietsch said in a letter. Disagreements between Amazon and publishers have centered on digital-book prices and a reluctance by some houses to replace physical copies of older books with online versions.
FINANCE
Piketty answers critics
French economist Thomas Piketty responded on Saturday to criticism by the Financial Times (FT) of his best-selling book on income inequality, telling reporters that the newspaper was being “ridiculous.” The paper said on Friday there was little evidence in the 43-year-old’s original sources to underpin his argument in Capital in the 21st Century that an increasing share of total wealth is in the hands of the richest. Piketty said: “The FT is being ridiculous because all of its contemporaries recognize that the biggest fortunes have grown faster. The data that we have on these fortunes is imperfect, but data for other things such as tax declarations on estates is more reliable.”
AUTOMAKERS
Caterham to be sold
Tony Fernandes, chief executive officer of low-cost carrier AirAsia BHD, plans to sell the Caterham group of automotive and engineering companies, the Edge Malaysia reported. The 50-year-old Malaysian businessman is seeking about £350 million (US$589 million) for the assets that include UK sports car manufacturer Caterham Cars Ltd and the Caterham Formula One Team, the newspaper said, citing a person it did not identify.
TRINIDAD
US$200m stimulus urged
Minister of Finance Larry Howai has ordered the Caribbean island’s government bank to inject US$200 million into the local market to help boost foreign-exchange allocation. Howai says the money is required to meet short-term needs and tackle ongoing limited supply issues. He said last week that foreign reserves have grown and remain strong.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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