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China mulls bolstering control of rare earths as national strategy
China has unveiled a draft bill designed to strengthen control of rare earths, vital to the production of high-tech goods such as hybrid cars and mobile phones, officials said Saturday. The draft bill, released to the public on Friday, said the Chinese government will manage the process from mining to exports of rare earths as a national strategy, as tensions with the United States have been escalating over state-of-the-art technologies. The United States and other major economies, including European countries and Japan, depend on rare earth imports from China, the world's dominant supplier of...
Kyodo News
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Pirate attacks remain high in Singapore Strait amid pandemic
Sea piracy and armed robbery in Asian waters jumped 17 percent last year compared with a year earlier, with a particularly high occurrence in the Singapore Strait, a Japan-led international center to combat the scourge said on Friday. A total of 97 such incidents were reported last year, of which the largest -- 34 -- took place in the Singapore Strait, the ReCAAP Information Sharing Center said in its annual report. The Singapore Strait, one of the world's busiest, remained a high-risk area last year, continuing the trend in 2019 when there were 31 incidents. The second highest was in Indonesi...
Kyodo News
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Japanese hi-tech duo eyes Vietnam's OCR market with AI-based service
HANOI, NNA - Japan's AI inside Inc. has teamed with a Vietnamese affiliate of Japanese telecommunications company Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corp. to market an artificial intelligence-equipped optical character recognition service in Vietnam. AI inside announced the partnership with OCG Technology Joint Stock Co., based in Hanoi, on Thursday for the cloud-based "DX Suite" service that scans accounting slips and other documents hand-written in Vietnamese for conversion into printed matter. Equipped with deep-learning AI technology developed by AI inside, the optical character-reading s...
NNA Business News
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Thailand's GULF to acquire big majority of GMIM for Vietnam energy expansion
By Chalermlapvoraboon Valaiporn BANGKOK, NNA - Kolpos Pte. Ltd., a subsidiary of Thai giant energy producer Gulf Energy Development Public Co. Ltd., (GULF) is set for expansion in Vietnam after buying a sizeable majority stake in Global Mind Investment Management Pte. Ltd. (GMIM). Kolpos will invest 1.2 billion baht ($40 million) to acquire 70.5 percent of ordinary shares of GMIM from Singapore-based company, Nech Opportunities Fund VCC, according to GULF’s filing to the Stock Exchange of Thailand on Thursday. “The objective of such acquisition is to further expand investments in Vietnam,” sai...
NNA Business News
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China's Xi asks Starbucks to play positive role in Sino-U.S. ties
Chinese President Xi Jinping has asked U.S. coffee chain Starbucks Corp. to continue playing a positive role in promoting economic and trade cooperation between the world's two major powers, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday. In a letter of reply to Howard Schultz, the chairman emeritus of Starbucks, on Jan. 6, Xi was quoted by the news agency as saying China "will provide broader space for enterprises from across the world" so that U.S. companies can develop in the country. Starbucks, one of the world's biggest chains of coffee shops, has thousands of locations in China. In hi...
Kyodo News
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China's foreign trade up in 2020 as economy recovers from virus shock
China's foreign trade rose 1.5 percent from a year earlier in 2020, the government said Thursday, as exports bounced back late in the year with the economy recuperating from a slowdown triggered by the novel coronavirus outbreak. The total volume of the country's trade totaled $4.65 trillion last year, according to the General Administration of Customs. China's exports increased 3.6 percent, while imports fell 1.1 percent as those from Australia decreased 5.3 percent. China has been Australia's primary export market for several years, but the deteriorating trade relationship between the two na...
Kyodo News
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Job placement firm Asia to Japan opens 1st S.E. Asia unit in Singapore
SINGAPORE, NNA - Human resources firm Asia to Japan has established its first Southeast Asian subsidiary in Singapore to promote employment of Singaporeans and other non-Japanese at Japanese companies operating in the city-state. The Tokyo-based firm said Wednesday it created its fully owned subsidiary, Asia to Japan (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., last month to enable talented Japanese-speaking Singaporeans and other non-Japanese to be hired by Japanese companies. Asia to Japan CEO Masato Sampei told NNA on Wednesday his firm entered the Singapore market because tougher employment regulations are maki...
NNA Business News
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Singapore firm's robot baristas to serve coffee at JR East stations
SINGAPORE, NNA - East Japan Railway Co. has acquired an equity stake in Crown Technologies with a view to using the Singapore retail tech startup's fully autonomous robotic baristas to serve coffee at railway stations in Japan. JR East Business Development SEA Pte. Ltd., a local subsidiary of the major Japanese railway operator known as JR East, said Tuesday it bought Crown Technologies shares at an undisclosed price in a deal intended to introduce the ELLA system, capable of serving 200 cups of coffee per hour, to JR East stations. By combining artificial intelligence, internet of things and ...
NNA Business News
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HotelPlanner CEO: How hospitality players can maintain competitiveness in 2021, Southeast Asia may set pace
By Celine Chen SINGAPORE, NNA - The nasty arrival of COVID-19 pandemic has led to the collapse in travel worldwide, devastating every category of the hospitality industry in 2020. However, with the imminent roll-outs of vaccination programs across the world, the travel market is poised for a rebound after months of agonizing times. But how can players such as hotels fill their rooms to pre-COVID levels? NNA approached industry leader Tim Hentschel, who has extensive experience in the hospitality and MICE industry, to share with readers the crucial strategies that they should adopt to bring bac...
NNA Business News
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First community to use ID for cashless payment may inspire the rest of the Philippines
By Darlene Basingan MANILA, NNA - Persuading cash-loving Filipinos to go cashless has been an uphill task for years. But a brilliant idea to combine an identification card with a debit payment card in a project in one well-managed community in capital Metro Manila might encourage the rest of the Philippines to adopt digital payment. PayMaya, a leading e-payment platform, which is a subsidiary of leading telco player Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co.(PLDT), has collaborated with the local authority of Namayan, an inner suburb within Mandaluyong City, to create the first ‘cash-lite’ communi...
NNA Business News
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