SEOUL (CNA) – South Korea’s telecommunications regulator said yesterday that Apple had submitted plans to allow third-party payment systems on its app store, to comply with a law banning major app store operators from forcing software developers to use their payments systems.
The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) had requested Apple Inc and Alphabet’s Google to submit compliance plans after the bill was passed in August last year.
The law went into effect in September.
Google announced its plans to allow alternative payment systems in South Korea in November to comply with the amended Telecommunication Business Act, dubbed the “anti-Google law”.
“Apple has a great deal of respect for Korea’s laws and a strong history of collaboration with the country’s talented app developers… We look forward to working with the KCC and our developer community on a solution that benefits our Korean users,” Apple said in a statement.
The KCC said Apple plans to allow alternative payment systems for a lower service fee versus the current 30 per cent commissions.
Apple did not provide details, such as a timeline of when the change will take effect or commission fee rates, but it plans to discuss further details with the KCC, the regulator said.
The entrance of the renovated Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in New York City. PHOTO: AFP
GENEVA (AFP) – The United Nations (UN) said yesterday it needed USD5 billion in aid for Afghanistan in 2022 to avert a humanitarian catastrophe and offer the ravaged country a future after 40 years of suffering.
In its biggest-ever single-country appeal, the UN said USD4.4 billion was needed within Afghanistan, while a further USD623 million was required to support the millions of Afghans sheltering beyond its borders.
The UN said 22 million people inside Afghanistan and a further 5.7 million displaced Afghans in five neighbouring countries needed vital relief this year.
“A full-blown humanitarian catastrophe looms. My message is urgent: don’t shut the door on the people of Afghanistan,” said UN aid chief Martin Griffiths.
“Help us scale up and stave off wide-spread hunger, disease, malnutrition and ultimately death.”
Since the Taleban movement seized control of Afghanistan in mid-August, the country has plunged into financial chaos, with inflation and unemployment surging.
Hundreds of Afghan men gather to apply for humanitarian aid in Qala-e-Naw, Afghanistan. FILE PHOTO: AP
Washington has frozen billions of dollars of the country’s assets, while aid supplies have been heavily disrupted.
Afghanistan also suffered its worst drought in decades in 2021. Without the aid package, “there won’t be a future”, Griffiths told reporters in Geneva. The Taleban authorities said the aid appeal for suffering Afghans was “very needed”.
“But at the same time I would like to say the need is for all this assistance approved in the past to be delivered during this harsh winter,” senior Taleban leader and the group’s designated UN representative Suhail Shahee, told AFP.
He said the inflow of funds would also help in the functioning of the now dilapidated banking system, adding that any cash coming into the country will help rein in the inflation.
“The banks are not working properly so there is also a need to control the inflation and that can be controlled when dollars … hard currency come to Afghanistan,” Shaheen said.
Griffiths said the appeal, if funded, would help aid agencies ramp up the delivery of food and agriculture support, health services, malnutrition treatment, emergency shelters, access to water and sanitation, protection and education.
An estimated 4.7 million people will suffer from acute malnutrition in 2022, including 1.1 million children with severe acute malnutrition.
HELSINKI (AFP) – Finnish telecoms giant Nokia performed better than expected last year and foresees further growth in 2022 as a supply chain crunch and inflation are set to ease, the network equipment maker said yesterday.
The announcement follows a string of quarterly earnings surprises for the network equipment maker, which last October managed to boost its third quarter profits despite a worldwide shortage of computer chips.
The group largely met expectations with EUR22.2 billion in net sales last year.
But it raised its 2021 operating margin guidance to between 12.4 per cent and 12.6 per cent, up from 10-12 per cent.
The boost was related to venture fund investments, a one-off software contract in the second quarter, “bad debt provision reversals and some other one-time benefits”, the company said in a statement.
An employee holding a Nokia N95 phone. PHOTO: AFP
Nokia now expects an operating margin ranging between 11 per cent and 13.5 per cent in 2022, citing “estimated continued improvements in the underlying business, supply constraints and cost inflation”.
Nokia Chief Executive Pekka Lundmark said last year that the company expects to see a gradual improvement in 2022, though it was not “100 per cent” guaranteed.
Lundmark has been credited with turning around the fortunes of the network giant, which has been flagging in the race with Sweden’s Ericsson and China’s Huawei in the 5G network equipment market.
After taking the helm in mid-2020, Lundmark implemented widespread job cuts, with savings funnelled into developing more competitive technology.
An attempt to smuggle 30 cartons of alcohol in the Temburong District was busted by the Royal Brunei Police Force (RBPF).
The RBPF said following the detection of a suspicious vehicle near a boat landing area of Kampong Ujung around 3.30am yesterday, Bangar Police Station personnel were informed.
On noticing police presence, the suspects attempted to escape by driving towards Sultan Haji Omar ‘Ali Saifuddien Bridge.
The vehicle with two suspects, a 45-year-old man and a 40-year-old woman, were stopped and an inspection revealed suspicious packages. A packet of crystalised substance believed to be drugs, including drug paraphernalia were also found. The suspects were brought to the Bangar Police Station.
The case was handed over to the Royal Customs and Excise Department and Narcotics Control Bureau.
The RBPF said it will continue to curb criminal acts, especially contraband smuggling.
The public can share information by contacting the police hotline 993.
ABOVE & BELOW: Suspicious packages inside the vehicle; and 30 cartons of alcohol seized by police. PHOTOS: RBPF
UPI – Officials at a Welsh zoo said a “mysterious creature” spotted swimming in the banded mongoose enclosure was retrieved by keepers and identified as a toy crocodile.
The Folly Farm Adventure Park & Zoo in Kilgetty, Wales, said in a Facebook post that a weekend visitor to the facility alerted staff to a “mysterious creature” in the banded mongoose exhibit.
“Was it a miniature Loch Ness Monster?” the Facebook post said. “A mysterious water lizard?”
Zookeepers were sent to capture the unidentified enclosure invader and “breathed a little sigh of relief” when they identified the animal as a toy crocodile that apparently had been dropped by a zoo visitor.
“It did give us all a laugh this grey Monday morning,” the post said.
The mysterious creature turns out to be a toy crocodile. PHOTO: FOLLY FARM ADVENTURE/FACEBOOK
VIET NAM NEWS/ANN – The Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association has targetted a coffee export turnover of USD5-6 billion in 2030, doubling the export value at present.
To reach this figure, experts believe that the domestic coffee industry needs to increase the proportion of processed coffee products from less than 10 per cent at present to about 25 per cent or even more.
However, increasing the proportion of processed coffee products is a big challenge for the industry due to the level of technology, complex factory operation and awareness of farmers.
At present, Vietnam has 160 coffee roasting facilities, 11 coffee blending facilities and eight instant-coffee processing facilities. The number of instant-coffee processing facilities is small and most of them are operating below their designed capacity. On the other hand, Vietnam’s processed coffee brands still have no place in the world market, and branding takes a lot of money and effort.
Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Đo Thang Hai said that to gain the target of USD6 billion, Vietnam’s coffee industry needed to strengthen connection between production and trade, expand export markets and develop products associated with brand building, towards building a sustainable coffee value chain.
According to Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Lê Minh Hoan, if the coffee industry wants to have sustainable development, there must be linkages among provinces or economic regions to form a larger-scale production area and build a brand for Tây Nguyên coffee.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) will continue to implement projects on sustainable development for the domestic coffee industry.
For the Central Highlands provinces, the ministry will set up logistics infrastructure for the coffee industry to create higher coffee value and more processed products.
Two women and a man allegedly involved in immoral activities were detained by the Royal Brunei Police Force (RBPF) on Monday afternoon.
Personnel from the Anti-Vice and Gambling Suppression Unit of the Criminal Investigation Department raided two separate rented rooms in Kampong Beribi around 2.42pm and 2.45pm, where they found the suspects involved in sexual activities.
The female suspects, a 37-year-old local and a 47-year-old foreigner, are believed to have been offering sexual services to a 47-year-old male foreigner.
During the raid, several evidence were discovered in the rooms including a mobile phone, condoms and cash, believed to be used for the illicit activities.
The suspects were brought to undergo the COVID-19 swab tests. They will be investigated under Section 294A (the offence of offering sexual services) and Section 294B (the offence of paying for sexual service) Chapter 22 of the Penal Code.
The public is reminded that offering sexual services is an offence in the country. Those with information of such activity can report to the RBPF by calling 993 or by visiting the nearest police station.
ABOVE & BELOW: Evidence found during the raid. PHOTOS: RBPF
GENESEO, ILLINOIS (AP) – An Illinois family has solved the mystery of what happened to their missing cat that likes to sit on horses and donkeys.
Ann Kandis said the cat, named Noodles, jumped into the trunk of her father’s car in November 2018 while he was at the family’s farm in Geneseo, the Quad-City Times reported.
Her father drove off, but stopped along the road when he heard a noise. He opened the trunk and the cat jumped out.
The family posted “lost cat” notices and searched along the road but couldn’t find Noodles.
Kandis had given up on finding Noodles until she stumbled across a Facebook message that a fellow horse lover posted around the time Noodles went missing. The post showed a cat sitting on a horse and asked whether anybody recognised the cat?
Kandis messaged the woman on Christmas Eve and she still had Noodles. When Kandis and her son went over to the woman’s house, Noodles ran up to them.
Kandis, who works as an emergency room physician for Genesis Medical Center, said finding Noodles brought her emotional relief during a stressful time.
She didn’t take Noodles home because she said he has a “good gig”, but added that she can still visit the cat.
SEOUL (AFP) – North Korea fired a suspected ballistic missile into the sea yesterday, with South Korea’s military warning the second such weapons test in less than a week showed clear signs of progress.
The early-morning launch came as the United Nations (UN) Security Council met in New York to discuss last week’s test of what Pyongyang called a hypersonic missile, although Seoul has cast doubt on that claim.
But the South Korean military said the “suspected ballistic missile” launched yesterday had reached hypersonic speeds – a sign of “progress” from last week’s test.
In the decade since leader Kim Jong-un took power, North Korea has seen rapid advances in its military technology at the cost of international sanctions.
Yesterday’s missile landed outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone. While there were no immediate reports of damage, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called the launch “extremely regrettable”.
People watch a television programme showing a file image of north korea’s missile launch at the seoul railway station in seoul, south korea. PHOTO: AP
US Forces Korea said the test “highlights the destabilising impact of the DPRK’s illicit weapons programme”, using the acronym of North Korea’s official name. The missile, fired towards the sea east of the peninsula yesterday at around 7.27am flew 700 kilometres at an altitude of around 60 kilometres at Mach 10 speed, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
Hypersonic missiles travel at speeds of Mach 5 and higher and can manoeuvre mid-flight, making them harder to track and intercept.
The UN Security Council meeting to discuss Pyongyang’s weapons programmes came after six countries, including the United States (US) and Japan, called on North Korea to “engage in meaningful dialogue towards our shared goal of complete denuclearisation”.
Pyongyang had likely planned the latest launch to coincide with the UN meeting “to maximise its political impact”, researcher at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy Shin Beom-chul told AFP.
He said the launch looked like a hypersonic missile test, judging by the purported speed, but warned against reading too much into it.
“Since South Korea claimed (the January 5 test) wasn’t a hypersonic missile referring to the speed, Pyongyang may have tried to showcase its maximum speed,” this time around, he said.
Hypersonic missiles were listed among the “top priority” tasks for strategic weapons in its current five-year plan, and it announced its first test – of the Hwasong-8 – in September last year.
yongyang has also said it had successfully tested new submarine-launched ballistic missiles, a long-range cruise missile, and a train-launched weapon in 2021.
The new tests come as North Korea has refused to respond to US appeals for talks.
At a key meeting of North Korea’s ruling party last month, Kim vowed to continue building up the country’s defence capabilities, without mentioning America.
BLOOMBERG – Hong Kong’s Omicron outbreak is dealing a double whammy to businesses.
Not only will new social distancing curbs crimp revenue for retailers and restaurants, a slashing of flights they rely on to bring everything from Australian cherries to wagyu beef into the financial hub is also set to raise costs and boost inflation. Cathay Pacific Airways, the city’s most connected airline, has cancelled hundreds of flights.
Cargo capacity could drop below one-fifth of pre-pandemic levels. Logistics costs may surge by 40 per cent within three weeks. Importers expect the price of fruit to rise by 10 per cent.
In pursuit of a zero-Covid-19 strategy, Hong Kong has shut gyms and cinemas. At the same time, an already fractured supply chain for a city that imports most of its goods has reached a breaking point, with businesses seeing delays in deliveries of staples such as berries and yoghurt and of premium seafood and cheeses.
The threat of an Omicron-driven surge has spooked Hong Kong, where the vaccination rate is among the lowest for developed economies. Though officials have found only dozens of cases in the community so far, they are tracking at least three separate transmission chains.
