■Petroleum
ASEAN ponders oil stockpile
Japan and South Korea are pressing Southeast Asian Nations to establish a common oil stockpile to enhance energy security but many ASEAN countries oppose the plan, officials said. Southeast Asian officials said an oil stockpile would be an expensive program which many Southeast Asian countries can ill-afford with the funds better used for much needed development programs. The issue of an oil stockpile would be discussed when energy ministers from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and their counterparts from China, Japan and South Korea meet next month on Langkawi island in northern Malaysia. Ramon Navaratnam, former deputy secretary-general of the Malaysian finance ministry, said the safest stockpile was below the ground.
■ Reconstruction
Banks negotiate over Iraq
Citigroup Inc, HSBC Holdings Plc, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co, Bank of America Corp and Barclays Plc are in talks with the US and British governments about rebuilding the Iraqi banking system, the Independent on Sunday reported, without revealing where it got the information. Following the US-led war with Iraq that toppled the regime of President Saddam Hussein, the country urgently needs a payment system, a way to finance trade and foreign exchange services, according to the London-based paper. The contracts offered will be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, it said. Standard Chartered Plc, a UK bank that has a business in Dubai, also has said it wants to be involved, the paper reported. Rebuilding or repairing Iraq's infrastructure and services may cost an estimated US$100 billion, analysts have said.
■ Pharmaceuticals
Restrictions to be lifted
Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will likely lift a ban on selling over-the-counter drugs at convenience stores and other retailers, the Mainichi Shimbun said, without identifying the source of its information. Retailers will be able to sell drugs such as cold medicines and analgesic plasters, the paper said. The market for non-prescription cold remedies is estimated at about ?100 billion (US$852 million), according to Japan Self-Medication Industry. The Cabinet Office will ask Koizumi to decide whether to allow retailers to sell drugs because Health Minister Chikara Sakaguchi and Reforms Minister Nobuteru Ishihara disagree over the issue, the paper said.
■ Computers
IBM will go to court
International Business Machines Corp, the world's largest computer maker, won't try to settle a lawsuit with a company which claims IBM improperly used operating system code, the New York Times reported, quoting an IBM spokes-woman. The SCO group in March sued IBM for violating a contract with SCO by copying code from the Unix operating system to Linux, a free software package, and distributing it on IBM computers, the Times reported. SCO bought the rights to the Unix computer code, developed by AT&T Corp in the late 1960s, from Novell Inc in 1995, the paper reported. IBM and other computer makers have been using their own versions of Unix called AIX and SCO has threatened to revoke a license to IBM for its version on a 100-day deadline passes, the Times said.
Agencies
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