A 174-tonne piece of jade worth millions of dollars that was uncovered in Myanmar is to stay where it is for now — because its owners do not have equipment strong enough to move it.
The 5.8m-long stone was discovered by miners in northern Kachin State last week, buried up to 60m deep inside a mountain.
“When the edge of the stone was scratched we could see the quality of the jade inside — the quality is very good,” said Tint Soe, 56, a local lawmaker.
Photo: AFP
While some have estimated the rock could be worth more than US$170 million, Tint Soe said its value was probably closer to US$5.4 million.
Jade is traditionally used for charms and bracelets, but Tint Soe said the company had not yet decided what this particular find would be used for — and have no way of moving it anyway.
“Currently the jade stone cannot be moved as there is no machine that can do it here, and no road either,” he said.
Myanmar is the source of nearly all of the world’s finest jadeite, a beautiful green stone highly prized in China where it is known as the “stone of heaven.”
Companies linked to the former military junta dominate the trade, which Global Witness valued at about US$31 billion in 2014 alone — equivalent to about half the country’s GDP.
Mining of the stone can extract a high human cost, with fatal mine collapses common — about 100 people died in a major landslide in November last year.
Most of the precious stone is smuggled across the border into China.
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