The Star Online: Business
The Star Online: Business |
- Asian markets mostly up in early trade
- Somali pirates release tanker seized enroute to M'sia
- Chinese man jailed for US trade secrets theft
| Asian markets mostly up in early trade Posted: 21 Dec 2011 06:03 PM PST PETALING JAYA: Asian markets were mostly up in Thursday's early trade following strong US and German data that dissipated concerns about the health of the global economy. Signs of a recovery in the US housing market firm German business sentiments saw investor confidence return in the region. On the local front, the FBM KLCI was up 3.05 points 1,488.03 at 9.04am. As for regional indices, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 slipped 0.40% to 8,425.88 while Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index was up 1.86% to 18,416.45. Shanghai's A index was flat at 2,191.15 while Taiwan's Taiex Index rose 0.11% to 6,974.37. Seoul's Kospi Index dipped 0.25% to 1,843.84 while Singapore's Straits Times Index was down 0.42% to 2,662.02. Nymex crude oil gained 34 cents to US$99.01 per barrel. Spot gold fell US$2.53 to US$1,612.70 per ounce. The ringgit was quoted at 3.172 to the US dollar. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Somali pirates release tanker seized enroute to M'sia Posted: 21 Dec 2011 05:21 PM PST MOGADISHU: Somali pirates released an Italian-owned oil tanker and its 22 crew on Wednesday after receiving a multi-million dollar ransom, one of the pirates told Reuters. The medium-sized tanker was seized by an armed gang firing guns and rocket propelled grenades some 500 miles off the coast of India and 800 miles off Somalia, as the vessel transited from Sudan to Malaysia. It was loaded at the time. Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti expressed "great satisfaction" at the release of the Savina Caylyn tanker and its crew of five Italians and 17 Indians. The tanker had been seized in early February. The ransom was dropped from an aircraft in two stages, according to a pirate speaking to Reuters by phone. "We have just received the remaining $3 million (1 million pounds) of the agreed $11.5 million ransom. We have abandoned the ship," a pirate calling himself Abdiwali said from Haradhere, one of the pirates' biggest coastal bases. The pirates released the tanker's Indian crew members after the first ransom drop was made, Abdiwali said, awaiting the second instalment before releasing the five Italian sailors a few hours later. There was no comment in Italy over the ransom. Seaborne gangs are making tens of millions of dollars in ransoms, and despite successful efforts to quell attacks in the Gulf of Aden, international navies have struggled to contain piracy in the Indian Ocean owing to the vast distances involved. Andrew Mwangura, a former regional maritime official and maritime editor of the online Somalia Report, said it was not yet clear if the tanker had begun sailing away from the Somali coast. The Aframax-type tanker can carry a maximum of just over 700,000 barrels of oil. The largest crude tankers carry maximum cargoes of between 2 to 3 million barrels of oil. - Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Chinese man jailed for US trade secrets theft Posted: 21 Dec 2011 05:11 PM PST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Wednesday sentenced a Chinese-born scientist to 87 months in prison for stealing millions of dollars worth of trade secrets from two major American agribusiness companies and sending the data to China and Germany. Kexue Huang, 46, worked at a Dow Chemical Co In October, he pleaded guilty in a federal court in Indiana to one count of stealing trade secrets from Cargill and one count of engaging in economic espionage at Dow AgroSciences, one of a handful of cases charged involving the U.S. Economic Espionage Act of 1996. Theft of valuable trade secrets from American companies has become an increasing concern, U.S. officials have said, as countries like China can bypass spending millions of dollars and years of research and development as they compete for lucrative business. "The theft of American trade secrets for the benefit of China and other nations poses a continuing threat to our economic and national security," Lisa Monaco, head of the Justice Department's national security division, said in a statement. Prosecutors had sought 87 months imprisonment. In a similar trade secrets theft case involving Ford Motor Co Cargill conservatively estimated at $12 million the research and development invested in the information stolen, according to court papers filed earlier this month. Huang admitted giving the information to someone at a Chinese university. Cargill told the court that Huang worked on a project related to one of its "most significant R&D projects" to develop a new food product that has yet to be commercialized, spending tens of millions of dollars over many years. The court filing gave no specific estimate for the loss by Dow beyond millions of dollars. The company said in a letter to the court that Huang was working on a family of crop protection products that have taken hundreds of millions of dollars to develop and two decades of research to create. In his plea agreement, Huang admitted that, despite signing a confidentiality agreement, he passed numerous secrets about Dow's products to others doing research in Germany and China. He also acknowledged that he was trying to develop and produce the pesticides in China to compete against his former employer. The case is USA v Kexue Huang, No. 10-cr-00102, in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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