Naver has decided not to acquire a stake in Korea's largest food delivery platform, Baemin, four months after a report alleged that the mobile platform company was considering forming a consortium with Uber to take over Baemin. “We reviewed scenarios on acquiring a stake in Baemin, but we have decided not to proceed with the acquisition, due to changes in the business environment and other factors,” Naver said in a regulatory filing Thursday. The filing came in response to a news report in May that Naver and Uber were considering forming a consortium with a 20-80 ownership split to acquire a stake in Baemin operator Woowa Brothers from its German parent company, Delivery Hero. At the time, Naver said it was reviewing various measures to strengthen its business competitiveness and that no concrete decisions had been made. However, the situation changed when Uber agreed in July to acquire a 100 percent stake in Delivery Hero for $14.8 billion. If completed, the deal would also bring the German group’s wholly owned Korean subsidiary, Woowa Brothers, under Uber. Uber said the deal is ex
Read full articleChina is emerging as a critical earnings lifeline for Korea’s struggling low-cost carriers (LCCs), offering them access to fast-growing passenger demand and lucrative business traffic as growth in other short-haul markets loses steam. Some 2.13 million passengers traveled between Korea and China in August, surpassing the previous monthly record of about 2.07 million set in August 2016, before the fallout from the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system in Korea severely disrupted bilateral tourism. The August figure was up 27.5 percent from a year earlier and 9.7 percent from July, according to data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. The rebound comes as Korean airlines are gaining access to some of the most commercially attractive China routes. In the latest allocation of traffic rights, the government gave major LCCs additional slots on routes linking Seoul with Beijing and Shanghai, as well as Guangzhou, Dalian and other Chinese cities. Jeju Air and Eastar Jet each secured seven weekly flights on the Incheon-Beijing route, while Parata Air and Air Premia re
Korean regulators’ hardline stance toward Coupang is complicating Seoul’s talks with Washington over the next stages of its planned $350 billion investment in the United States. The latest development came Wednesday when the Seoul High Court rejected Coupang’s request to suspend the effect of a Fair Trade Commission (FTC) decision ordering an on-site inspection of the U.S.-headquartered e-commerce firm’s alleged violations of a local fair transaction act. Coupang had refused to cooperate with the probe, arguing that the FTC failed to provide advance notice. The court ruling allows the FTC to proceed with the investigation. FTC Chairman Ju Biung-ghi has vowed to review the agency’s internal rules to close what he described as loopholes that allow companies to delay or evade investigations through court injunctions. He has also rejected U.S. criticism that the regulator is discriminating against American companies, saying the FTC will continue to enforce Korean law without regard to nationality. The confrontation is particularly sensitive, as Korea and the U.S. work to flesh out t
President Trump said on Friday that Chinese President Xi Jinping appeared to like referring to artificial intelligence as “super intelligence” days after Trump announced the U.S. would be using the new name in official documents and communications. Trump made the observation in a Truth Social post in which he referred to his meeting with the...
AlphaGenome Atlas contains predictions for the molecular effects of all roughly 9 billion possible single-letter changes in human DNA. Researchers can search the database to see how individual variants are predicted to affect processes such as gene expression, RNA splicing, and chromatin accessibility across different cell types and tissues. That gives researchers something they have
A small number of users are said to be facing issues with their new iPhone’s Face ID system.
San Francisco and New York still lead The Observer‘s inaugural AI Cities Index, but the more consequential finding sits further east. Six of the world’s top 10 AI cities are in East and Southeast Asia, and Seoul ranks first globally for implementation: whether a city has the institutions, systems and practitioners to put AI to work across […] The post Ecosystem Roundup: Seoul tops AI implementation as Singapore joins the global top tier appeared first on e27.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump discussed artificial intelligence (AI) and Taiwan at the White House on Thursday as part of a state visit dominated by pageantry. On AI, Xi said that “the right thing to do is to draw on each other’s strengths, not guard against each other”, according to a statement from the Chinese foreign ministry. He also backed continued dialogue about risks, joint efforts to prevent misuse and keeping AI under human control. Trump earlier said on...
MANILA, Philippines — In the digital age, it only takes one cyberattack to bring a government service to a halt. When the Maritime Industry Authority’s (MARINA) seafarer document system was hit, the disruption exposed a problem beyond the attack itself: an aging digital infrastructure that had been waiting years for an upgrade. The agency temporarily
If the American guests seated at the head table with President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump at Thursday’s White House state dinner were any indication, Washington now views its relationship with Beijing largely through the prism of technology. Analysts said the seating arrangement underscored how tech industry titans driving the global AI infrastructure boom were pushing to draw the two economic superpowers closer together. Sitting alongside Xi, Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan, Trump...
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MANILA, Philippines – UAAP Esports is no longer content with proving that esports belong in the collegiate sports scene. It now wants to prove that it can draw the same respect, attention, and energy as the league’s biggest events. Don’t call it just another sport, esports is a main event. At least, that’s what the
Asian stocks and bonds fell as a global bond selloff deepened and inflation fears intensified, with oil prices remaining elevated. Regional indices pointed lower in early trading. Wall Street had finished a volatile session mixed to flat. The S&P 500 edged slightly lower. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 161 points, or 0.3 per cent. […] The post Altcoins are running on real news, Wall Street is running on fear appeared first on e27.