INTERNET
Telecoms halt YouTube ads
AT&T Inc, Verizon Inc and several other major advertisers are suspending their marketing campaigns on Google’s YouTube site after discovering their brands have been appearing alongside videos promoting terrorism and other unsavory subjects. The spreading boycott confronts Google with a challenge that threatens to cost it hundreds of millions of US dollars. Earlier this week, Google vowed to step up its efforts to block ads on “hateful, offensive and derogatory” videos.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Teva to cut 6,000 jobs
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd plans to cut as many as 6,000 jobs, or about 11 percent of its global workforce, the daily Israeli newspaper Calcalist reported. The world’s biggest producer of generic drugs is looking to eliminate between 5,000 and 6,000 positions over the next few years, Calcalist reported yesterday, without saying how it got the information. A 5,000-person reduction would save US$2 billion, the paper said.
BANKING
New members join AIIB
The China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) yesterday said it has approved 13 new prospective members. The multilateral lender began operations earlier last year. The 13 new members include Hong Kong, Canada, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Ireland, Hungary, Belgium, Peru, Ethiopia and the Republic of Sudan, the US$100 billion AIIB said. They will officially join the bank after making their first deposit of capital and finishing required domestic processes, bringing the bank’s total membership to 70, it said.
AVIATION
American in talks in China
American Airlines Group Inc is in advanced talks to buy a US$200 million stake in Asia’s biggest airline, China Southern Airlines Co Ltd (中國南方航空), reports said yesterday, as it looks to get a shoe-in to the country’s huge aviation market. The Texas-based company plans to take the stake in the Chinese firm’s Hong Kong-listed shares through a private placement, Bloomberg News reported, quoting people familiar with the matter. China Southern has a total market capitalization of HK$15 billion (US$2 billion) in Hong Kong.
TELECOMS
ZTE pleads guilty in US
Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corp (中興) on Wednesday pleaded guilty in a US federal court in Texas for conspiring to violate US sanctions by illegally shipping US goods and technology to Iran. The guilty plea was part of an agreement the company reached earlier this month with US authorities that also called for about US$900 million in fines and other penalties. US District Judge Ed Kinkeade in Dallas, Texas, accepted the company’s plea to three charges: conspiring to export US-made items to Iran without a license, obstructing justice and making a material false statement.
BRAZIL
Growth forecast halved
The government on Wednesday halved its economic growth forecast for this year, from 1 percent to 0.5 percent, indicating weaker confidence in a quick exit from the country’s worst recession in history. The government had already scaled back its forecast for this year in November last year from 1.6 percent. However, the Ministry of Finance still remains bullish that the nation’s economy will rebound, predicting 2.5 percent growth for next year.
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