Oil prices yesterday fell about 3 percent, heading back toward their lowest levels for more than a year on worries about oversupply and the outlook for energy demand as stock markets tumbled following a US interest rate rise.
Stock markets dropped worldwide after the US Federal Reserve raised rates and kept most of its guidance for additional hikes over the next two years, dashing investors’ hopes for a more dovish policy outlook.
US light crude oil fell US$1.61 a barrel, or 3.3 percent, to a low of US$46.56 and was trading at about US$46.70 by 08:45am GMT. North Sea Brent was down US$1.60, or 2.8 percent, at US$55.64 a barrel.
Both major oil futures contracts rallied sharply on Wednesday, but were yesterday at or close to their lowest levels for more than 14 months, more than 30 percent below multiyear highs reached at the beginning of October.
“Wednesday’s recovery was short-covering,” said Xi Jiarui, chief oil analyst at consultancy JLC.
“Investors quickly moved their attention to deteriorating fundamentals in the oil markets, including more signs of slowing economic growth next year, record production and the lack of confidence with OPEC’s pledge to curb production,” Xi said.
OPEC members and other oil producers, including Russia, this month agreed to curb output by 1.2 million barrels per day in an attempt to drain tanks and boost prices.
However, the cuts are not to happen until next month and production has been at or near record highs in the US, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
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