World

HONG KONG : A Hong Kong-based trade platform launched by HSBC Holdings three years ago with much fanfare has shut down after failing to build a commercially viable business. Serai, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Europe's biggest bank, that connected small-and-medium-sized apparel makers with component suppliers worldwide, was HSBC's first investment in a non-banking tech startup. HSBC had invested around $70 million in the independently operating start-up in the last three years, two sources familiar with the matter said, adding that Serai had started to wind up its business over the last few weeks. "The decision to wind down Serai follows a thorough business review and is a purely commercial decision," HSBC said in a statement to Reuters on Wednesday. It did not provide details about Ser...

INDIANAPOLIS : Daniel Ricciardo has not delivered the results hoped for in Formula One, McLaren boss Zack Brown said on Friday after announcing that their IndyCar team had extended their agreement with Pato O’Ward who is eyeing a Formula One seat. McLaren took care of a bit of business ahead of Sunday's Indy 500 by extending O'Ward's contract through the end of 2025 in a deal that will include some F1 testing for the 23-year-old Mexican and a new McLaren sportscar as a signing on bonus. McLaren's commitment to O'Ward will come as a warning to an under-performing Ricciardo, who has managed one points finish in six F1 races this season and had a nightmare start to Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix by crashing in Friday's practice. The Australian is under contract through 2023 but Brown said ther...

SINGAPORE: ASEAN will matter even more to India as India’s economy and its role in the Indo-Pacific region grow, said Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan on Thursday (Jun 16). He was responding to a question about how some believe that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is beginning to matter less to India as it takes on a more active role in the region with the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. Speaking to journalists at a doorstop interview from New Dehli, Dr Balakrishnan said he had “the opposite take”. “As the Indian economy grows, as its markets or its exports and even its need for energy and other resources, India has got strategic interests, not just in the Indian Ocean, but across into the Asia Pacific as well,” he added. “And because ASEAN is righ...

WASHINGTON :Liquidity troubles at crypto lending platform Celsius Network, which have left its 1.7 million customers unable to redeem their assets, will increase U.S. regulatory pressure on the sector, which was already on the defensive amid other crises this year. The industry has been battling scrutiny over concerns that digital assets are being used to evade sanctions on Russia and the May collapse of cryptocurrency TerraUSD, which sent the market plunging and raised systemic risk worries. New Jersey-based Celsius's move this week to freeze withdrawals, citing "extreme" market conditions, has spotlighted other problems with the crypto sector: weak investor safeguards. Securities regulators in Alabama, Kentucky, New Jersey, Texas and Washington have opened an investigation into the Ce...

So is there any way to detect lies based on real science? Actually, yes, and it involves understanding the psychology behind how liars think. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has even said that "the Federal government should not rely on polygraph examinations for screening prospective or current employees, or to identify spies or other national security risks because the test results are too inaccurate." In fact, polygraphs aren't reliable. With as little as 15 minutes of training, people have been able to consistently beat the test. Humans have been trying to master lie detection for thousands of years — and failing miserably. In 2009, the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG, was formed by the federal government to develop new lie detection best practices, and by 2016...

LONDON/CHICAGO: Billionaire Tom Steyer and investment partner Katie Hall have led the latest funding round for technology start-up Regrow Ag, which aims to help accelerate the shift to climate-friendly farming. Their Galvanize Climate Solutions was joined in the US$38 million Series B fundraising by Salesforce founder Marc Benioff's TIME Ventures and Rethink Impact, alongside existing investors including trader Cargill and Microsoft's M12. Food and agriculture contributes 26 per cent of the world's total carbon emissions, Regrow says, and is a growing area of focus for companies as they look to reduce their own emissions by greening their supply chains. To help fix the problem, Regrow, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, connects companies and others with farmers, who enrol in vario...

Once a poor "skinny kid" from Malaysia, Hock Tan was going head-to-head with a legendary U.S. technology mogul for a transformative acquisition. Tan placed a call earlier this month to VMware Inc Chairman Michael Dell, also the chief executive of computer maker Dell Technologies Inc. He proposed one of the biggest tie-ups in the history of the technology sector. Broadcom Inc, the chip maker that Tan leads, was willing to acquire VMware, a cloud software company for $61 billion. For Tan, now 70, the deal would be the culmination of a string of acquisitions that has helped him turn Broadcom into a technology conglomerate worth $225 billion, along the way building a reputation as an astute dealmaker and ruthless cost-cutter. Dell, who personally owns 40 per cent of VMware and controls it ...

BANGKOK : Thai workers who were sacked last year from a factory supplying global lingerie brands including Victoria's Secret will receive $8.3 million, in what labour activists say is the biggest settlement of its kind in the global garment industry. About 1,200 workers were laid off without severance pay and wages owed to them by Brilliant Alliance Thai Global Co Ltd (BAT) after it went bankrupt and shut down its factory in Samut Prakan province in March 2021. The incident was one of "hundreds of cases of wage theft" that labour activists say took place in the garment industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. The settlement, financed by Victoria's Secret in a loan arrangement with BAT's owner, could set a precedent for global brands to better protect the rights of workers in their supply c...

Utari Octavianty is no stranger to imposter syndrome. The 28-year-old is the co-founder of Aruna, an Indonesian farm-to-table e-commerce start-up that gives fishermen direct access to global consumers, fetching fair prices for their catch. "When we talked to other [start-up] founders, they came from Harvard, Stanford, and suddenly there's us — from a local university in Indonesia," she told CNBC Make It. "But somehow that became the motivation, it's not the education that matters. It's how we create impact," she said. If this business grows bigger and bigger, is my experience enough to handle all of this? Utari Octavianty Co-founder, Aruna Indeed, the impact that she and her co-founders, Farid Naufal Aslam and Indraka Fadhlillah, have created is far-reaching — over 26,000 fishermen acros...

:The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked a Texas law that bars large social media companies from banning or censoring users based on "viewpoint," siding with two technology industry groups that have argued that the Republican-backed measure would turn platforms into "havens of the vilest expression imaginable." The justices, in a 5-4 decision, granted a request by NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which count Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as members, to block the law while litigation continues after a lower court on May 11 let it go into effect. The industry groups sued to try to block the law, challenging it as a violation of the free speech rights of companies, including to editorial discretion on their platforms, under the U.S. Constitution's First Am...