RETAIL
Visa no longer accepted
Wal-Mart Canada, a unit of Wal-Mart Stores Inc, said it will no longer accept Visa credit cards because the fees applied to purchases are too high. The company said it would stop accepting Visa cards as payment beginning on Saturday at stores in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The change is to be rolled out in phases across Canada. The Wall Street Journal, which reported the decision earlier, quoted a Wal-Mart spokeswoman as saying the move affects only its Canadian stores. Wal-Mart Canada pays more than US$100 million in credit-card fees every year, according to the company. Lowering such costs is necessary to keep prices low, the company said in its statement.
INTERNET
Amazon may launch music
Amazon.com Inc is discussing plans for a stand-alone music service, separate from its Prime subscription, with record labels, according to a person familiar with the matter. The technology giant has not reached any deals yet, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The US$9.99-a-month service might be introduced in the coming months, Reuters reported on Friday, citing two people familiar with the matter.
IRAN
Oil contracts need review
New model oil contracts, designed to lure billions of US dollars in foreign investment for the energy industry, still need revisions and the government is confident the first deals will be signed within months, Minister of Petroleum Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said. Regulators reached a “partial consensus” on language in the contracts that were sent to the Cabinet for approval two weeks ago, Zanganeh said in an interview published on Saturday by the semi-official Khabar Online news site. Zanganeh dismissed suggestions the contracts had been delayed, saying “signing oil contracts takes time.” The government is hoping to draw as much as US$50 billion of foreign investment a year from major oil companies such as Italy’s Eni SpA and France’s Total SA.
ENERGY
Citgo to restart refinery
Citgo Aruba said it would invest US$450 million to US$650 million to reactivate an oil refinery in Aruba that has been idle since 2012. The company on Saturday said in a statement that the facility in San Nicolas would be retrofitted over the next 18 to 24 months. The refinery is expected to process up to 209,000 barrels per day of Venezuelan extra-heavy crude into intermediate crude. It would then send the oil to its US refining network for further processing. Citgo has a 15-year operational lease with a 10-year extension option. The agreement between the Aruban government and the US-based subsidiary of Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA was signed during a Friday ceremony in Caracas.
TRADE
Africian nations access EU
The EU on Friday signed a trade deal giving six African nations unlimited access to the economic bloc. Known as the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), the deal was signed off by EU Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmstrom and trade ministers from Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and South Africa. Last year, the EU imported goods worth almost 32 billion euros (US$36 billion) from the region, mostly minerals and metals. The EU exported goods of the nearly same value, mostly engineering, automotive and chemical products.
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