■Crude oil
Prices rise over Iraq fears
Crude oil rose after the chairman of Iraq's parliament said his country, source of almost 3 percent of the world's oil, may not comply with a UN resolution requiring unfettered arms inspections. The UN Security Council resolution threatens military action against Iraq if it refuses to cooperate with weapons inspections. "The Iraqis have just accelerated the war calendar," said John Kilduff, senior vice president of energy risk management at Fimat USA Inc in New York. "This is the type of statement that the US needs to justify action." Crude oil for December delivery rose US$0.20, or 0.8 percent, to US$26.14 in after-hours, electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 10:47am Singapore time, after rising as much as 1 percent. Earlier in floor trading, oil rose 16 cents to US$25.94 a barrel. Prices have risen 31 percent this year partly on concern that exports from the Persian Gulf, source of a quarter of the world's oil, would be disrupted by a war in Iraq.
■ Foreign Sellers
Motorola, VW tops in China
Motorola Inc's China phone-making unit had the biggest domestic sales of any overseas company for the second year running, the Jiefang Daily reported.
Motorola (Tianjin) Electronics Ltd sold 41 billion yuan (US$5 billion) worth of mobile phones and equipment last year, the party-run paper said. Shanghai Volkswagen Automotive Co was second with 32 billion yuan in sales of passenger cars.
Motorola shares fell 4.8 percent to US$8.38 yesterday in New York. Volkswagen shares gained 1.7 percent to 36.70 euros in Frankfurt yesterday.
■ Mobile phones
Internet service offered
NEC Corp's Biglobe, Nifty Corp and five other Japanese Internet-service providers together will offer Internet-based phone service in the first half of next year, the Nikkei reported. The companies, also including Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp's OCN and Sony Corp's So-net, will let about 2 million customers call each other for free over the network. Users will get 11-digit dial-up numbers starting with 050 and the testing of the service will start this year, Nikkei said. Users must have high-speed Internet connections to use the service. Japan's fixed-line phone market is valued at ?5 trillion (US$41.8 billion), Nikkei said. Other companies in the agreement include KDDI Corp's DION, Japan Telecom Holdings Co's ODN and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.
■ Biotech
Bananas fight cancer
Cancer-fighting tomatoes and bananas that protect against sexually transmitted diseases top the list of advancements being made in biotech food, according to Americans surveyed by an industry group. The Council for Biotechnology Information said that a research program aimed at enhancing tomatoes with an antioxidant believed to help fight cancer was ranked as the leading biotech food development in 2002 by two-thirds of a group of 1,000 American adults surveyed. Such a tomato is not yet commercially available, but is one of myriad genetically modified plants going through the research and development process. The other top developments in food biotechnology, according to the Roper survey, included a sweet potato that is resistant to a particularly destructive plant virus.
Agencies
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