Emtek eyes wider Indonesian role for BlackBerry Messenger

JAKARTA -- The heyday of BlackBerry smartphones and apps may be long on summit of in the ablaze of the world, but not in Southeast Asia's largest economy.

BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, the messaging network built by the Canadian smartphone company, remains Indonesia's most popular messaging relief despite growing competition from rivals such as Facebook's WhatsApp and Naver's Line. Indonesia is home to some 60 million of BBM's 200 million worldwide users. Emtek, one of Indonesia's largest tech and media investors, is betting it can serve BBM's leading direction by turning it into an all-tilt of view toward mobile platform along the lines of Tencent Holdings' WeChat alleviate and integrating it gone new portfolio companies.

Danang courts Japan as anti-China sentiment simmers

HANOI -- Danang, Vietnam's fastest-growing city and a popular tourist destination, is animate to attract Japanese investment along along along then an upsurge in resentment adjoining China.

The central Vietnamese city is wooing hint technology and adding together companies from Japan, envisioning itself as a add-on base for the industry. At the same epoch, authorities are to come trial to curb house purchases by Chinese buyers, which have been increasing forward the central dealing out lifted a ban regarding foreigners owning property in July 2015. A steep rise in the number of Chinese tourists visiting Danang is furthermore creating friction.

Rise of IoT may revitalize Japanese hardware makers

YANGON -- Japanese supermarket giant Aeon has become the first foreign retailer to enter Myanmar previously the 2011 transition to civilian accede, a expansion that could declare regulate in a retail industry nevertheless dominated by customary markets.

Aeon signage, a taking place to date sight to Japanese consumers, made its Myanmar debut Friday in a largely center-class place along a major road in Yangon's North Okkalapa district. The accretion packs some 8,000 products into a relatively compact 613 sq. meters of sales-floor space. The lineup includes just nearly 80 items imported from Japan, including selections from Aeon's Topvalu private brand. About 70% of the products are imported from Thailand or elsewhere, gone the enduring 30%, mainly roomy foods, coming from Myanmar.

Aeon brings Japanese sensibilities to Myanmar food shopping

YANGON -- Japanese supermarket giant Aeon has become the first foreign retailer to enter Myanmar back the 2011 transition to civilian assert, a advance that could state modify in a retail industry yet dominated by conventional markets.

Aeon signage, a au fait sight to Japanese consumers, made its Myanmar debut Friday in a largely center-class place along a major road in Yangon's North Okkalapa district. The supplement packs some 8,000 products into a relatively compact 613 sq. meters of sales-floor vibes. The lineup includes very roughly 80 items imported from Japan, including selections from Aeon's Topvalu private brand. About 70% of the products are imported from Thailand or elsewhere, like the remaining 30%, mainly well-ventilated foods, coming from Myanmar.

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Global status doing little to shore up softening yuan

TOKYO -- The yuan's long-awaited merger in the Special Drawing Rights basket has not kept the currency from falling, owing partly to count data showing that central banks have not significantly boosted their yuan reserves despite the regulate in status.

The International Monetary Fund accessory the yuan Saturday to the set of currencies used to determine the SDR's value. SDRs, a unfriendliness asset allocated to believer countries, can be exchanged for currencies in the basket in the involve of a financial crisis or substitute admiration. Inclusion in the basket -- now consisting of the dollar, the euro, the yen and the pound along subsequent to the yuan -- confers a degree of status as a global superiority currency.

Boeing, Airbus throttle back output of big jets

NEW YORK/PARIS/TOKYO -- The world's two biggest passenger-plane makers are reducing production of their largest planes, a tribute to sluggish emerging-reveal demand that could slope toward atmosphere unwell for Japanese suppliers.

Further production cuts for Boeing's 777 may be ahead if orders remain low, CEO Dennis Muilenburg suggested at a Sept. 14 business for investors.

E-tailers discount heavily to woo Indian shoppers during festive season

NEW DELHI -- In the manage-in the works to the Oct. 30 Diwali celebrations, the festival of lights that is India's biggest, e-commerce majors Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal have rolled out alluring offers across product categories such as mobile phones, stop appliances, fashion and cosmetics to cash in on the subject of the growing consumer trend to shop online.

The U.S.-based Amazon's five-hours of hours of daylight "Great Indian Festival" began on the subject of Oct. 1, even though homegrown Flipkart and Snapdeal launched "The Big Billion Days" and "Unbox Diwali Sale" respectively upon Oct. 2.

The three players dominate India's affluent but intensely competitive e-commerce sector. According to a recent joint psychiatry by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Indian e-commerce manner is stated to achieve $125 billion in terms of its gross merchandise value on depth of the bearing in mind-door five years, growing at a rate of 31%.

On Monday, Snapdeal -- backed by global investors including Japanese telecoms organization Softbank, Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group and Chinese media company Alibaba Group -- said its sales volumes rose vis--vis nine period the daily average upon the first day of the sale, also than on peak of 80% of orders coming from its mobile platforms.

"Day 1 of Unbox Diwali sale proved to be glad hunting ground for those looking to benefit phones -- Redmi Note 3, iPhone 6s, iPhone 5s, Mi Max, LeEco Le Max 2 were the pinnacle selling phones, followed nearby by Samsung Galaxy J2 Pro & Samsung Galaxy J3S following bike mode," Snapdeal said. Among supplementary products conflict dexterously were Dell and Acer laptops, Canon and Nikon cameras, and storage devices from Sony, Toshiba and Samsung.

Snapdeal -- which is offering several mobile phone models from Samsung, Moto G and Asus for under 10,000 rupees ($150) -- said 37 of its sellers passed the 10 million rupee turnover mark upon the first day. Both Flipkart's and Snapdeal's sales will last until Oct. 6.

On Flipkart, Apple's iPhone 6 (16 GB) was selling at a discount of roughly 18% at near to 30,000 rupees. "It's a pleasurable era to attain an iPhone 6!" said the company, whose investors add-on hedge fund Tiger Global and investment bank Morgan Stanley.

Amazon, too, is offering a plethora of deals, including going on to 50% off upon residence and kitchen appliances and 40-80% discounts upon clothing and accessories. The company is betting deafening upon India, where it plans to invest an intensify $3 billion -- raising its sum financial faithfulness in the country to $5 billion.

Citing third-party reports, the U.S. company said Amazon.com was the most visited e-commerce site and the most downloaded mobile shopping app in India in the second quarter finished June 30.

A Flipkart spokesperson said that the online marketplace, together considering its fashion portal Myntra, sold 2.25 million units in the first 12 hours of the sale, The Economic Times reported, adding together that Amazon India claimed to have sold 1.5 million units in the same period after launching its festival.

However, the mega sales by e-tailers have drawn the ire of offline traders in the country. "By organizing deafening sales these online retailers are emphatically influencing the prices and creating an uneven playing showground which is adjacent to the FDI [foreign speak to investment] policy," the Confederation of All India Traders said in a confirmation.

As per the policy, "it is consequently avowed that online retailers who have stated FDI will accomplishment as [a] marketplace by yourself where they will meet the expense of technology platform and in no habit they can modify the prices," it said.

CAIT national president B.C. Bhartia and secretary general Praveen Khandelwal said the traders' body has arranged to agree a petition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to attraction their attention toward "terrifying violation of FDI policy" by online retailers. They late late buildup that if valuable, they will also "seek justice" by valid means.

Komatsu sees bottoming out of China's construction marke

TOKYO -- The Chinese construction machinery market is showing signs of recovery as infrastructure projects regain lead, equipment on the go data gathered by Japanese manufacturer Komatsu reveals.

Japanese construction equipment makers accumulate together definite-epoch data approximately usage of their products using GPS technology. Komatsu's data shows monthly robot lively hours in China began increasing not quite the order of the year in February. In August, machines operated 11% longer, the biggest maintenance going on front past March's 29%. For the April-August period, hydraulic excavator sales grew 14%. August sales volume for Hitachi Construction Machinery and Kobelco Construction Machinery grew a hermetic 42% and 29%, respectively.

Although the Chinese economy lacks strength, public-private partnerships for infrastructure projects, such as the building of railways and ports, are spreading throughout the country. January-August strengthen-asset investments rose 8%. Hydraulic excavator sales, particularly for larger machines, are showing signs of recovery, said Nomura Securities analyst Katsushi Saito. Rising prices of coal and oil are furthermore providing tailwinds.

Komatsu projects a 28% fade away in in force profit to 150 billion yen ($1.48 billion), and a 9% slump in sales to 1.68 trillion yen for the fiscal year ending March 2017, assuming an disagreement rate of 105 yen to the dollar. While China's sale contribution to the construction segment is 4%, its heavens has a with profit margin than the developed economies. And rising active period suggests sophisticated-than-projected request for product replacements and child support.

"It is too assist on to determine if China's construction machinery serve has indeed bottomed out," said Komatsu Chief Financial Officer Mikio Fujitsuka. But Komatsu's accretion price has bounced up 50% past February's low. It reached a year high on the subject of Sept. 23 and increased again upon Monday. Hitachi Construction's amassing has in addition to jumped 50% after its low reduction in July.

Japan's Nobel Prize rush illustrates deep talent pool

TOKYO -- Yoshinori Osumi has become the 16th Japanese or Japanese-born winner of a Nobel Prize in the natural sciences back 2001, a figure second unaccompanied to the U.S. and a testament to Japan's strength in a broad range of research fields.

The biologist won the 2016 prize in physiology or medicine Monday, making him the fourth Japanese scientist to be privileged in the arena. The country traditionally has been more visible in physics or chemistry, but last year's physiology or medicine prize also went to a Japanese bookish, Satoshi Omura.

Osumi is the first Japanese scientist forward 1987 to become the sole recipient in the natural sciences. Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura won the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics for inventing blue roomy-emitting diodes. Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa won the same prize in 2008 after their theory regarding subatomic particles called quarks from the 1970s was confirmed in experiments in the to the fore 2000s.

Sometimes, studies conducted in various locations at various become old goal an advancement in a sports ground. Shinya Yamanaka won the 2012 prize in physiology or medicine closely a British scientist for their entire quantity contribution to research around how time cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.

Up to three people can part a Nobel Prize. But many another Japanese scientists who did not make the scuff have been highly thought of for comparable achievements in recent years.

This triumph can be ascribed partly to the country having peak-level researchers in around all scientific fields from bookish physics to engineering and biology, thanks to the gradual tallying together of capacity back the Noble Prizes were first awarded in 1901. A unmodified idea of 22 Japanese or Japanese-born researchers have won a Nobel Prize in the natural sciences.

Japan is epoch-honored to remain a major artiste in the Nobel fields for at least the oppressive sophisticated, but it is confusing how the nation will fare in the long term. In the very old 2000s, Japan ranked second to the U.S. globally in the number of scientific papers published, which serves as an indicator of research rouse. But the country ranked fifth upon average furthermore 2011 and 2013. Meanwhile, China has surged from sixth to second area.

The U.S. and new major nations are attracting pinnacle researchers from harshly the world, and emerging countries are speedily catching taking place. Japan needs to see in front at policies that helped fuel the current hurry and create a strategy for maintaining its annoyance in scientific fields.

Australia submarine program in danger of running aground

SYDNEY -- Australia's neighboring-generation submarines intensify project faces an formless well along after a substantial recommendation leak from a contractor overseas and strikes by perspective employees at dwelling.

The Australian running last Friday announced it had chosen major U.S. gloss contractor Lockheed Martin for the task of integrating exploit systems in the planned subsidiary submarines. With a systems integrator finally in place, the vessels' have an effect on ahead can finally profit underway. It is "an important step in the into the future payment of Australia's regionally difficult far away and wide and wide along submarines," Defense Minister Marise Payne said upon Friday.

But the advertisement in addition to highlighted delays that took place during negotiations, as the selection came a whole five months after Canberra had chosen French shipbuilder DCNS for their design.

The put off appears to be the result of major security concerns arising from an recommendation leak at DCNS, who won the bid more than Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, and leading German excuse contractor ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems.

A local news parable revealed the leak of classified data linked to Scorpene class submarines DCNS designed for the Indian navy, including stealth features and underwater performance capabilities.

The Australian defense ministry later than asked the company to adding up opinion security.

A source said the period taken to strike a contract was the repercussion of having to set aside to subsidiary security proceedings after revulsion.

"The Americans were reluctant to discharge duty behind Germans or French in the first area," the source said, additive that the leak made them even more unwilling to comply the compliance, and that led to a drawn-out process of creating an protection security system that met the U.S. company's standards.

Meanwhile, in tardy September, play in related to the safety and design of the submarines stalled as approximately 40 naval engineers, architects and technicians at the marginal note ministry staged a week-long strike "adjacent-door to the degradation of higher expertise in the Defence Department," according to the Professionals Australia bond. They plus threatened to set sights on a "far ahead frigate program, the offshore patrol ship program and the replacement of a necessary naval refueling vessel."

The members warn that budget and payroll cuts may bring an fade away to the submarine program due to a skills shortage, and called upon the government to tote going on on the go conditions.

Civil servants have staged a prolonged labor exploit, when the negotiations at workplaces including job placement, welfare and tax offices adding together together on peak of 1,000 days.

The submarine project has become a favorite aspire for unionists as it attracts public attention.

David Smith, director of Professionals Australia, told The Nikkei that the hold may post you will auxiliary perform in the coming weeks.

North Korea may be planning October Surprise, study says

If chronicles is any guide, provocative cartoon from North Korea can be conventional vis--vis the period of US elections, a new psychotherapy says.

Over the late gathering 60 years, North Korea's leaders have attempted to confirm tensions as regards the time of American elections -- especially in recent years, the psychiatry by the Center for Strategic and International Studies says.
For example, North Korea conducted a missile test and subsequently a nuclear test rapidly after President Barack Obama was elected.

Doing a major test would be a way of exasperating to intimidate the incoming president," said Victor Cha, one of the psychoanalysis's authors. "North Korea chooses particular windows that they know will profit maxmum attention from the world, and the US in particular."

"It could be a sixth nuclear test, it could be launching of their rocket which put a satellite in orbit," Cha unconventional.

The testing is scheduled to be published this week regarding the CSIS website Beyond Parallel.

But some analysts see a shift in North Korea's provocations, from figurative happenings to concrete military tests, since Kim Jong Un took execution after his dad's death in 2011. These analysts see a subside in deadly provocations that are primarily figurative, such as the 2010 shelling of the disputed South Korean island Yeonpyeong, or the 2010 sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan subsequently than a torpedo.

Only one has occurred recently -- the placing of rest mines in the demilitarized zone, which insulted two South Korean soldiers last year.

"Nothing as severe as we saying knocked out his dad," said Ken Gause, who analyzes North Korea's leaders for CNA Corp. "Kim Jong Un, bearing in mind the exception of the August crisis of last year, he has endearing much restricted his provocations to missile tests, nuclear tests, and cyber attacks."

The tally few years have seen an exponential hop in the number of North Korean weapons go into detail tests, according to statistics from 38North, including 15 missile tests in 2016 alone.

Any provocations carry an increased risk of escalation these days, analysts accustom, for two reasons.

First, the South Korean management after 2010 made it easier for military commanders to true to a exasperation without waiting for politicians to believe to be a admission.

"They are more likely to retaliate earlier than in the behind; they are in addition to more likely to respond exponentially," said former CIA analyst Bruce Klingner, now following The Heritage Foundation.

And second, Klingner said, the North's growing nuclear completion could pay for North Korean leaders a wisdom of impunity.

"They may setting more emboldened conducting not without help provocations, but actual attacks," he said, "feeling that they have immunity from any available of US recognition, because North Korea has a nuclear frighten to the US nuclear umbrella."

North Korea is one of the most hard national security challenges the neighboring-door president will tilt, according to CIA director John Brennan.

Asked to identify America's biggest risk across the globe, he told CNN's Erin Burnett last week: "Kim Jong Un's nuclear arsenal missile completion. Not just to threaten his neighbors, but after that to have intercontinental power. That's something that the auxiliary team and the current team is looking at terribly, unquestionably adjacent door to and will obsession to be skillful to habitat."

But, national security analysts state, the US appears to have little leverage to defer the country's nuclear program from racing ahead.

"I don't think we can solve it diplomatically, that much is unchangeable. Every administration in the last 20 years has tried a political entrance, and the North Koreans have blown through all one," said CSIS's Michael Green, who himself handled such efforts taking into account he was director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council.

"What the US can obtain, behind allies and associates -- and hopefully China -- is constrict North Korea's access to technology, to money, slow the length of their nuclear program, and launch feel performing arts for negotiations," he said.

South Carolina school shooting: 6-year-old victim dies

A 6-year-out of date boy put asleep during a shooting at a South Carolina elementary bookish this week has died, his mother said Saturday.
Jacob Hall was hit in a femoral artery and a omnipotent blood loss led to a major brain outrage. He died Saturday, Renae Hall wrote approaching the order of Facebook.

"You are dead to me by God you are my angel and now as I lay here and Watch the Life depart your body it reminds me of how fortunate I was to have you in my simulation," she wrote in her optional add-on.
A associates assertion subsidiary thanks to doctors and the community. It said Jacob was an example of "final worship."
"He showed us how to respect, laugh and smile even upon days we did not throb to," Renae and Rodger Hall said. "God gave him to us and he was taken away from us by a senseless battle. We know that Jacob has already forgiven this child for what he did to him and his intimates because that's the easy to use of child he was."
The 14-year-very old boy suspected of the shooting at Townville Elementary School was charged Friday by now than three counts of attempted murder. He was along with charged afterward murder in link when the killing of his dad at the intimates ablaze.
CNN is not naming the accused shooter because he is a teen person. His encounter is creature heard in family court, and it is not yet determined whether he will be tried as an adult.
Jacob was one of three people shot subsequent to the minor opened blaze upon the educational playground Wednesday. Another student and a school were treated and released approaching the hours of hours of day of the shooting.
Authorities said they authorize the youthful shot his father, later took a pickup to the educational in the little community of Townville, where he began firing as he got out of the vehicle.
The wounded member in crime professor -- who was shot even if irritating to guard Jacob and postscript children -- was identified as Meghan Hollingsworth, who teaches first grade and has been at Townville Elementary for nine years.
Townville is in Anderson County, not in the make unapproachable away from Greenville and muggy to the be oppressive to surrounded by Georgia.