ENERGY
US agency selling crude oil
The US Department of Energy is offering 11 million barrels of crude for sale from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve ahead of sanctions on Iran that are expected to reduce global supplies of crude. The delivery period for the proposed sale of sour crudes is to be from Oct. 1 through Nov. 30, according to a notice on Monday. The sale appears to be designed to show the administration of US President Donald Trump is taking measures to restrain energy price increases ahead of the sanctions, one crude trader told reporters. As a shale boom helped US oil production hit an all-time record this year, US lawmakers increasingly have viewed oil-reserve sales as a way to reduce deficits and fund government operations.
TELECOMS
Singtel eyeing Amaysim
Singapore Telecommunications Ltd (Singtel), Southeast Asia’s largest telecom, is moving ahead with examining a possible bid for wireless operator Amaysim Australia Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said. The company is working with Bank of America Corp to assess options for investing in Sydney-based Amaysim, the people said, asking not to be identified because the process is private. The appointment was made in the past two weeks, one of the people said. A deal for Amaysim, which leases the wireless network owned by the Singapore carrier’s local subsidiary, would give Singtel access to the operator’s more than 1.1 million mobile subscribers. Shares of Amaysim have slumped about 54 percent this year, giving the company a market value of A$193 million (US$142 million).
INTERNET
Microsoft thwarts attack
Hackers linked to the Russian government tried to target the Web sites of two conservative US think tanks, suggesting they were broadening their attacks in the build-up to November elections, Microsoft Corp said. The software giant said it had thwarted the attempts last week by taking control of sites that hackers had designed to mimic the pages of the International Republican Institute and the Hudson Institute. Users were redirected to fake pages, where they were asked to enter usernames and passwords. The International Republican Institute has a roster of high-profile Republican board members, including US Senator John McCain, who has criticized US President Donald Trump’s interactions with Russia and Moscow’s rights record.
MALAYSIA
Projects to be canceled
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad confirmed during a visit to Beijing yesterday that three China-backed projects totaling US$22 billion will be canceled until his country can find a way to pay its debts. The projects include a railway connecting Malaysia’s east coast to southern Thailand and Kuala Lumpur, and two gas pipelines. Mahathir is trying to reduce the country’s national debt, which has ballooned to about US$250 billion. After meeting Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) on Monday, Mahathir said he believed China would help Malaysia resolve its fiscal problems. The leader also warned against “a new version of colonialism happening because poor countries are unable to compete with rich countries just in terms of open free trade.” The US$20 billion rail project was contracted with China’s largest engineering firm, China Communications Construction Co (中國交通建設公司), and mostly financed by a loan from the Export-Import Bank of China (中國進出口銀行).
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