The Philippine government has ordered Facebook Inc, Lazada Group and Sea Ltd’s (冬海) Shopee to stop selling unregistered portable mobile phone transmitters, which local media said might be being used by politicians campaigning for elections in May next year.
The Philippine National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) said the sale of the equipment, which can send text messages to nearby mobile phones, contravenes a law on radio control, as well as an order prohibiting the use of portable cellular mobile repeaters.
The machines were being sold for as much as 3 million pesos (US$59,267) each in online shops, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported on Sunday, saying that political groups could be secretly using them.
The online shops were ordered by the NTC to stop selling the device marketed as “Hitech SMS Blaster” and their representatives to appear before the commission on Oct. 27, according to the regulator’s order on Monday.
The equipment cannot be sold, bought or used except by the disaster management council and other authorized state agencies in times of emergency, NTC Deputy Commissioner Edgardo Cabarios said in a text message.
Earlier this month, the NTC ordered an investigation into emergency text blasts announcing the presidential bid of former Philippine senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the son of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
The Marcos campaign team on Wednesday last week said that it supports the probe, adding that the text blast happened when Ferdinand Marcos Jr filed his candidacy and suspects it was part of “demolition jobs” against him.
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