GAMBLING
Harrah’s offers sports betting
An Atlantic City casino was to become the fourth in New Jersey to offer sports betting. Harrah’s casino was to start taking sports bets at 11am yesterday, two days after its sister property, Bally’s, did. The Borgata, Ocean Resort and Bally’s are also offering sports bets, along with two horse racing tracks, the Meadowlands and Monmouth Park. What everyone is waiting for is approval to offer mobile or online sports betting. No one has yet been approved to offer that, although numerous gambling companies have applied to state gambling regulators for permission to do so before the American football season begins next month. The Borgata, which on June 14 became the first casino to offer sports betting, is presumably furthest along in the approval process for online sports betting. New Jersey in May won a US Supreme Court case clearing the way for all 50 states to offer sports betting should they choose to do so.
UNITED KINGDOM
Housing prices gain pace
Housing prices gained momentum last month after rising at their slowest annual rate in five years in June, mortgage lender Nationwide Building Society said yesterday. Housing prices rose by an average 2.5 percent from a year earlier, faster than growth of 2 percent in June and above a forecast for a 1.9 percent rise in a Reuters poll of economists. In monthly terms, prices last month rose by 0.6 percent, faster than the Reuters poll forecast of 0.2 percent. The annual increase remained in the narrow 2 to 3 percent range of the past 12 months and the lender still expected prices to rise by only 1 percent this year, Nationwide said. The country’s housing market has slowed since the 2016 referendum decision to take the country out of the EU.
DEFENSE
BAE share dive in first half
BAE Systems PLC earnings fell almost 10 percent in the first half of the year as Europe’s biggest defense company booked hits against its US operations, offsetting gains from major contract wins. Underlying earnings before interest, tax and amortization dropped to £874 million (US$1.14 billion) from £967 million a year earlier, London-based BAE said in a statement yesterday. While BAE has won contracts to provide military vehicles to the US Army, warships to the Royal Australian Navy and fighter jets to the Qatar Air Force, it posted additional costs at a munitions plant in Radford, Virginia, and for the wind down of US shipbuilding programs. The company is also working to end losses at its cybersecurity arm. Chief executive officer Charles Woodburn said BAE is maintaining its guidance for annual results in line with last year’s 42.1 pence a share in what he described as a “transition earnings year” for the group.
INTERNET
Baidu profit up on news app
Baidu Inc (百度) yesterday said net profit for the second quarter of this year jumped 45 percent, fueled by growth in its personalized news app and artificial intelligence (AI) projects. The firm logged a net income of 6.4 billion yuan (US$967 million) for the April-to-June period. The Beijing-based company said its total revenue swelled 32 percent and about three-quarters of its profit came from mobile revenue. Baidu App, which offers personalized news feeds and search, in June saw daily active users rise 17 percent annually to 148 million. Baidu has been trying to reposition itself from a heavy reliance on the search-engine business toward technologies used in AI, which Beijing wants the country to become a leader in.
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],”
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
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