Perahu karam di Sarikei: Dua dikhuatiri lemas, dua selamat |
- Perahu karam di Sarikei: Dua dikhuatiri lemas, dua selamat
- Google sheds Motorola in $2.91 bln deal with Lenovo
- Obama repels new Iran sanctions push, for now
- Brunei’s petroleum industry declines, economy falls to 9.7%, GDP drops
- Proposed new hospital in Sri Aman ‘sick’
| Perahu karam di Sarikei: Dua dikhuatiri lemas, dua selamat Posted: 30 Jan 2014 02:30 AM PST Posted on January 30, 2014, Thursday SARIKEI: Sebuah perahu karam di Tanah Putih, Rumah Buda, Batang Rajang kira-kira pada jam 2 petang tadi. Sumber Jabatan Bomba dan Penyelamat mengatakan dua mangsa masih hilang, manakala dua lagi selamat.  To enable your comment to be published, please refrain from vulgar language, insidious, seditious or slanderous remarks. This includes vulgar user names.  |
| Google sheds Motorola in $2.91 bln deal with Lenovo Posted: 30 Jan 2014 12:47 AM PST WASHINGTON: Google has agreed to sell Motorola to Chinese technology giant Lenovo for $2.91 billion, after a lackluster two-year effort to turn around the smartphone maker it bought for $12.5 billion. The deal ends Google's run as a handset maker after it biggest-ever takeover, which was announced in 2011 and finalized in 2012. It also provides Lenovo footholds in smartphone and tablet markets where it is eager to gain traction while acting as a peace offering to Samsung and other partners that make devices powered by Google-backed Android software. "It is win-win," said analyst Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies in Silicon Valley. "Google keeps the patents and the research group, and they keep partners off their back, while Lenovo gets what they need to get into the US smartphone market." The deal comes just a week after Lenovo said it will buy IBM's low-end server business for $2.3 billion, giving it a platform to compete in that sector with US giants Dell and Hewlett-Packard. However, Lenovo's Hong Kong-listed shares dived 8.21 percent to HK$10.06 on Thursday as investors were spooked about Motorola's profitability. Even under Google, Motorola failed to gain traction in a rapidly evolving smartphone market now dominated by South Korea's Samsung and US-based Apple. Google and Lenovo claimed the deal was good for everyone involved. "Lenovo has the expertise and track record to scale Motorola Mobility into a major player within the Android ecosystem," Google chief executive Larry Page said in a statement. Lenovo chairman and chief executive Yang Yuanqing said the acquisition "will immediately make Lenovo a strong global competitor in smartphones. We will immediately have the opportunity to become a strong global player in the fast-growing mobile space." The Chinese firm was the fifth-largest smartphone maker in the fourth quarter, with a 4.5 percent market share, barely behind fellow Chinese maker Huawei and South Korea's LG, according to a report by research firm IDC. Ramon Llamas, at IDC, said with Motorola added in, Lenovo will be number three globally and gain other benefits. "Lenovo gets an all-important foothold in North America and in Latin America, and to a lesser extent Western Europe," Llamas said. "Motorola has distribution, it has brand recognition, Lenovo does not have that." Lenovo became best known in the United States after buying IBM's PC business in 2005, and used that to become the world's biggest PC maker in 2013. However, JP Morgan analysts said in a note to clients that Motorola is deeply unprofitable with losses approaching US$1 billion and questioning whether Lenovo can get the business in the black. They asked: "Are they buying a bit more than they can chew?" While Google would be taking a loss on the sale, it did spin off the Motorola Home division for $2.3 billion in 2012 and sold off some of its manufacturing facilities. Some analysts said one of Google's main interests in Motorola would be the portfolio of 17,000 patents, the majority of which it will keep. "Google got what they wanted and needed from Moto — they got patents, engineering talent and mobile market device insight," said technology analyst Jack Gold. "They don't need to be in the device business… This is a win for Google and a win for Lenovo in my opinion." But Llamas said the deal still leaves a hole of about $7 billion for Google and asked AFP: "Are the patents worth $7 billion? I don't know but that is a big question." Llamas said Motorola failed to make headway some had expected with Google's deep pockets. While the unit produced a highly regarded Moto X handset and a budget-priced Moto G, it has remained far behind the leaders. "Nobody expected Motorola to go back to its heyday, but I think with Google's backing some of us expected it to make a run at the market leaders and that didn't happen." In a blog post, Page said Google bought Motorola "to help supercharge the Android ecosystem" and that goal has been accomplished. "But the smartphone market is super competitive, and to thrive, it helps to be all-in when it comes to making mobile devices. It's why we believe that Motorola will be better served by Lenovo — which has a rapidly growing smartphone business and is the largest (and fastest-growing) PC manufacturer in the world," Page said. "This move will enable Google to devote our energy to driving innovation across the Android ecosystem, for the benefit of smartphone users everywhere." Strategy Analytics said Google's Android system was used on 78.9 percent of smartphones sold globally in 2013. Motorola is not among the top global smartphone makers but has around seven percent of the US market, according to analysts. -AFP To enable your comment to be published, please refrain from vulgar language, insidious, seditious or slanderous remarks. This includes vulgar user names. |
| Obama repels new Iran sanctions push, for now Posted: 29 Jan 2014 08:09 PM PST President Barack Obama appears to have prevailed, for now, in a campaign to stop Congress from passing new sanctions on Iran he fears could derail nuclear diplomacy. Several Democratic senators who previously backed a bipartisan sanctions bill publicly stepped back after Obama threatened a veto during his State of the Union address on Tuesday. Several sources familiar with behind-the-scenes maneuvering on the bill say a number of other Democratic senators signed up for more sanctions had privately recoiled from a damaging vote against their own president. The developments appear, in the short term, to have checked momentum behind the bill, which had appeared headed for a veto-proof majority in Congress. "I am strongly supporting the bill but I think a vote is unnecessary right now as long as there's visible and meaningful progress" in the negotiations, Senator Richard Blumenthal told AFP, after first expressing reservations earlier this month. Democratic Senator Chris Coons made a similar declaration at a post-State of the Union event hosted by Politico. "Now is not the time for a vote on an Iran sanctions bill," he said. Another Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin, now hopes Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will not bring it up. "I did not sign it with the intention that it would ever be voted upon or used upon while we're negotiating," Manchin told MSNBC television. "I signed it because I wanted to make sure the president had a hammer if he needed it and showed him how determined we were to do it and use it if we had to." The White House mounted an intense campaign against a bill it feared would undermine Tehran's negotiators with conservatives back home or prompt them to ditch diplomacy. Obama aides infuriated pro-sanctions senators by warning the measure could box America into a march to war to halt Tehran's nuclear program if diplomacy died. The campaign included a letter to Reid from Democratic committee chairs urging he put off a sanctions vote. Another letter was orchestrated from a group of distinguished foreign policy experts. Multi-faith groups also weighed in and coordinated calls from constituents backing Obama on nuclear diplomacy poured into offices of key Democrats. The campaign appears for now to have overpowered the pro-sanctions push by hawkish senators and the Israel lobby, whose doubts on the Iran nuclear deal mirror those of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Senator Johnny Isakson, a Republican co-sponsor of the legislation, said: "It looks like we're kind of frozen in place." Those behind the anti-sanctions campaign though privately concede they may have won a battle, not a war. The push for new sanctions will flare again ahead of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) annual conference in March, which Netanyahu is expected to address. It could also recur if the talks on a final pact extend past the six-month window set by the interim deal. But for now, groups that supported the push against sanctions celebrated. "This is a major victory, a crucial victory for the American public who don't want to see a war," said Kate Gould of the Friends Committee on National Legislation. "For right now, it looks like it's not going to be brought up," she said but warned "there'll be other efforts to try and sabotage the process." The liberal pro-Israel lobby group J Street played a major role in the anti-sanctions push. Vice president Alan Elsner said the group "continues to work hard to persuade lawmakers not to take action that risks sabotaging the negotiations with Iran. "We're happy that more and more senators are seeing the logic of our argument," he added. Republican Senator Mark Kirk, who help write the sanctions law, pledged to fight on. "The American people ?- Democrats and Republicans alike ? overwhelmingly want Iran held accountable during any negotiations," said Kirk. He said his bill, also the brainchild of the Foreign Relations Committee's Democratic Chairman Robert Menendez was an "insurance policy" against Iran's development of nuclear weapons. The White House did not just chafe at the bill's new sanctions, but also at a clause requiring a final deal to include a complete dismantling of Iran's entire nuclear infrastructure. Analyst say such a perfect solution — desired by Israel — is not realistic. The White House, no doubt keen to avoid antagonizing lawmakers on such a sensitive issue, declined to comment on the developments. But Obama put the case for the interim deal, which freezes aspects of Iran's nuclear program in return for an easing of some sanctions, in his speech on Tuesday. "If this Congress sends me a new sanctions bill now that threatens to derail these talks, I will veto it," he warned. He offered political cover to Democrats and sought to convince waverers he would back new sanctions if diplomacy failed. That message would also have been picked up in Iran as negotiators gear up for new talks Obama says have less than a 50-50 chance of yielding a final deal. -AFP To enable your comment to be published, please refrain from vulgar language, insidious, seditious or slanderous remarks. This includes vulgar user names. |
| Brunei’s petroleum industry declines, economy falls to 9.7%, GDP drops Posted: 29 Jan 2014 08:08 PM PST BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN: A significant decline in Brunei's petroleum and hydrocarbon industry has caused the nation economy to plummet to 9.7 percent during the third quarter of 2013,©BRUDIRECT.COM reported. A data by Department of Economic Planning and Development (JPKE) shows that during the quarter, the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) was estimated BND$4.6 billion compared to BND$5.16 billion recorded in the same period of 2012. According to statistics released by JPKE, the performance of fossil fuels industry has declined to 11.7 percent year-on-year. The industrial sector which is weighed down significantly by a 17.2 percent fall in mining, posted a year-on-year decrease of 9.7 percent. The industry's poor performance in the third quarter followed a growth rate of 0.05 percent in the second quarter of 2013. Other subsectors of the industries have fared slightly well. For example, construction grew 3.5 percent year-on-year, followed by manufacturing at 3.1 percent and electricity and water at 1.9 percent. The non-hydrocarbon sector continued to increase by 2.4 percent year-on-year. Services sector contributed minimally to the overall economic growth, also raising output by 2.4 percent after recording an increase of 4.3 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2013. Real estate and ownership of homes contributed 4.8 percent year-on-year followed by private services with 3.6 percent, finance at 2.8 percent, trade 2.2 percent, and transport and communication 2.1 percent and government services at 1.5. One percent increase year-on-year is recorded in agriculture, fishery and forestry sector, recovering from 6.2 percent decline in the second quarter of 2013. This is primarily attributed to the growth of the agriculture sector by 3.3 percent after a decline of 4.1 percent in the previous quarter. JPKE further stated that the decrease in GDP is due to 9.2 percent drop in exports of goods and services year-on-year followed by government consumption expenditure by 0.3 percent year-on-year. Imports of goods and services recorded a growth by 4.9 percent followed by capital formation 4.8 percent year-on-year and personal consumption expenditure 1.1 percent year-on-year. To enable your comment to be published, please refrain from vulgar language, insidious, seditious or slanderous remarks. This includes vulgar user names. |
| Proposed new hospital in Sri Aman ‘sick’ Posted: 29 Jan 2014 07:25 PM PST KUCHING: Though it has been nearly three years after it was announced, work on the proposed new hospital in Sri Aman has not started. DAP Sri Aman chief Leon Jimat Donald, who visited the site of the new hospital recently, was shocked to find nothing had changed ever since the project's announcement. "The site is apparently abandoned, judging by the condition of the gate into the area that has collapsed and the signage nearly covered by crawling vines. "It is indeed an extremely painful wait for the people of Sri Aman yet again; the dream of a new modern hospital to service and care for them," said Leon, who is also vice chairman of DAP Sarawak. He wondered how much longer the people of Sri Aman had to wait for the new hospital to be built. The present hospital, which had been operating since 1959, can no longer cope with current demands. The medical workers, he claimed, were overworked as the current hospital had very old facilities. "Promises upon promises seem to be heaped upon the people of Sri Aman, yet we are ignored yet again when the pleas for a new hospital are apparently ignored." He claimed the elected representatives in Sri Aman seemed to be doing nothing about this apparent problem. The new hospital is one of the projects announced during the walkabout by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak in 2011. Based on media reports, the RM200 million project was to be implemented in two phases and scheduled to be completed by October 2016. To enable your comment to be published, please refrain from vulgar language, insidious, seditious or slanderous remarks. This includes vulgar user names. |
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