South Korea’s battery maker LG Energy Solution on March 24 announced plans to build a 4.8 trillion won ($4.1 billion) lithium-ion battery plant in Ontario, Canada with carmaker Stellantis and a 1.7 trillion-won cylindrical battery plant in Arizona state, a first of its kind in the US. To support the plan, LG Energy Solution approved a combined capital commitment of $2 billion over the course of the construction, which gained board approval on March 23, showed filings with the Financial Supervisory Service. LG signed a binding agreement with Stellantis, which owns car brands such as Dodge, Maserati, Fiat, Chrysler, Citroen…
Author: Asia News Network
Vietnam is determined to tackle domestic violence by prioritising the amendment of laws and policies on domestic violence and raising public awareness to change people’s behaviour, according to a workshop in Hanoi on March 24. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism held the event in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The Government of Australia funded it under the project “Eliminating violence against women and children in 2021-2025.” It discussed the new National Programme on Domestic Violence Prevention and Control until 2025, approved by the Prime Minister in January 2022, and the Prime Minister’s decisions on family…
Some two million recipients of the Covid-19 vaccine by Sinovac are set to lose their fully vaccinated status if they do not receive their boosters by April 1, said Malaysia’s health minister Khairy Jamaluddin. “Based on the latest data, about 2.09 million recipients of the Sinovac vaccine for their primary series have yet to get their booster shots,” he told a press conference in Parliament on March 24. “They will stand to lose their fully vaccinated status when the deadline ends.” The deadline for adult primary recipients of CoronaVac – the vaccine produced by China’s Sinovac Biotech – is March…
More than two years on, the world might finally be turning the corner on the pandemic. Stay-at-home and quarantine orders are either being lightened or lifted completely. Vaccination drives are rolling out in full force, with more than six billion doses administered thus far – just recently, Indonesia recorded more than 56 per cent of its population is fully vaccinated. It looks like we’re going to get through this thing, so what does it mean for venture capitalists in ASEAN? Given the trends – vaccinated travel lanes, waiving quarantine orders for vaccinated tourists, and so on – we can expect…
A subsidiary of Thailand’s PTT Exploration and Production (PTTEP) has won a bid to survey for oil and gas in a new block in Malaysia’s sea, PTTEP said on March 23. PTTEP CEO Montri Rawanchaikul said the company’s subsidiary PTTEP HK Offshore Ltd and its Malaysian partner, SapuraOMV Upstream, have signed a production-sharing contract with Petronas. The joint venture was awarded the right to survey in Block SB412, northwest of Sabah state. Montri said the joint venture won the Malaysia Bid Round 2021 to win the right to carry out the survey and now PTTEP has had 12 survey contracts…
Global cooperation on 6G research should be accelerated as the next few years are crucial for determining the direction of next-generation wireless technology, according to officials and experts. While there is no universally accepted definition of 6G, the technology is expected to have far lower latency, higher speeds and more bandwidth than 5G. The technology supports the integration of space, air, territorial and maritime communication technologies, and 6G is expected to be in commercial use around 2030, they said at the opening ceremony of the online Global 6G Conference on March 23. Xiang Libin, deputy head of the Chinese Ministry…
Vietnam has set a target of becoming an industrialised country with highly competitive industries, and among the world’s top 15 largest exporters by the end of 2030. According to a report by the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), the country’s immediate target is to develop 20 products with strong international brands, to strengthen its position in the global supply chain, to bring its supporting industry’s capacity to meet 70 per cent of domestic demand and localisation of production to 45 per cent. The country’s supporting industry, which has remained underdeveloped and overly reliant on imports, has been identified as…
Music and entertainment group Sony Music is cementing its long-term commitment to Singapore and Southeast Asia as it opened its flagship headquarters in the city-state on March 23. The company has declined to disclose the investment sum for this regional HQ, located in Duo Tower in the Bugis area. The new office houses Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Music Publishing and artiste and label services company The Orchard. It also serves as the base for Sony Interactive Entertainment, the creators of PlayStation. The company decided on Singapore because the city-state “is already a hub for big tech players like Google, Spotify,…
Cotton prices surged to more than a decade high in global market in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, abnormal hike in freight charge and drought in the US, which will drive up the production cost for readymade garment (RMG) makers in Bangladesh, thus affecting their profitability. The price of the plant fibre reached $1.3171 per pound (about 453 grammes) on the key US futures contract on March 21, the highest since July 2011, according to a report of the AFP news agency. Even before the turmoil in Ukraine, prices of key textile raw materials had surged in the international…
SK trading International, a subsidiary of South Korean refiner SK Innovation, on March 23 announced plans to purchase up to 200,000 barrels of “net-zero oil” each year for five years from US-based Occidental Petroleum Corp, in a move to use the sustainable commodity for commercial products. The affiliates of SK Group, South Korea’s third-largest conglomerate by assets, will use the oil for products including eco-friendly aviation fuel. SK’s purchase of net-zero oil will begin in 2025. While oil still releases greenhouse gases when it is burned, Occidental calls it net-zero oil because it says it can remove carbon from the…