Business

By Sethuraman N R

(Reuters) – Global energy major BP has pledged to lift oil production by 44% and gas output by 89% from India’s largest field off its west coast, under a decade-long contract, according to block operator Oil and Natural Gas Corp on Thursday.

ONGC named BP as its technical service provider on Wednesday to assist in boosting output from a baseline crude production of 45.47 million metric tons and 70.40 billion cubic metres (BCM) of gas.

Energy major Shell also participated in the tender, which sought advanced recovery technologies and expertise in managing complex mature reservoirs to boost production, ONGC said in an exchange filing.

BP projected an increase in oil production by 44% to 65.41 million tons and gas output by 89% to 112.63 BCM from the Mumbai High field, which was discovered in 1974.

India, the world’s third-biggest oil importer and consumer, aims to rapidly increase its oil and gas production, which has remained stagnant for years.

The increase in production is expected to begin in the next fiscal year starting April 1, with full-scale visibility anticipated by 2027-28, ONGC said in the filing.

The incremental production is expected to generate additional oil and gas revenue for the country of up to $10.30 billion, and contributions from royalty, cess and other levies amounting to as much as $5 billion, the explorer said.

In return, BP will receive a fixed fee for the first two years, followed by a service fee based on a percentage share of the revenue from net incremental production, after recovering incremental costs, according to ONGC.

The field reached peak production of 471,000 barrels per day of oil in March 1985, and its output had declined to about 134,000 bpd in April 2024, a tender document showed last year.

(Reporting by Sethuraman NR; Editing by Nidhi Verma and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)

source

LONDON (AP) — The new year is always a good time to make a fresh start — including with your email inbox. To kick off 2025 with a clean slate, why not clear out all those unnecessary and unwanted messages?

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have piles of messages that have been accumulating in your inbox: receipts, bank and credit card statements, mobile phone bills, plane tickets, restaurant bookings, reminders, security warnings, spam and more.

Mixed in with all that administrative detritus might be some personal missives from friends and family that are worth keeping.

There are several reasons to purge all that digital clutter. For one, it cuts the risk in case of a data breach. If hackers somehow gain access to your email, they won’t have any personal or financial info like credit card details to pilfer.

A decluttered inbox also helps boost productivity and focus because it’s easier to find important messages if you don’t have to sift through reams of irrelevant ones.

Some productivity proponents advocate inbox zero, a practice that requires dealing with each email that comes in so that by the end of the day your inbox is empty.

But who has the time and energy for that? If you’re busy, it’s easier to just deal with the messages that need immediate attention and ignore the rest. That is, until the backlog becomes too big.

Here are some tricks to tame your inbox by culling unwanted emails from important ones:

Email accounts used to have limited storage space, say a gigabyte or two at most, which meant that messages with big attachments took up lots of space. Nowadays, email comes with plenty of free storage but it’s still good practice to clear out oversized messages because they tend to build up over time. Do you really need to keep all those high-resolution photos of a forgotten friend’s grandchildren?

In Microsoft Outlook, click on the “Size” column or button to float the biggest messages to the top, where you can go through and delete them. Outlook also lets users sort by attachment so that messages with added files show at the top. If you want to save the message itself, right click on the attachment to remove it.

In Gmail, go to the search settings to filter out messages that are “greater than” a certain size. Start at, say, 20 megabytes, and then gradually reduce the number.

Emails from frequent automated senders, such as newsletters and mailing lists, can take up a lot of space in your inbox. Or perhaps you get a lot of security notifications from your bank that might be important in the moment but quickly become outdated.

It’s often too tedious to delete them individually so filter your inbox by sender to delete them as a group. In Outlook click the “From” column or button. In Gmail or Yahoo mail, use the search bar to look for the sender’s email address.

Combine this with another search trick that narrows down the date range to filter out all those old emails that you never got around to deleting. In Outlook or Gmail, you can set a date range to capture emails from, for example, 2010 to 2017, so that you can get rid of, say, all those utility bills you don’t need anymore.

Emails from mailing lists tend to include certain words or language that makes it a bit easier to filter them out. One such obvious term is “unsubscribe.” Searching for a word like that, which wouldn’t normally be used in emails written by humans, will identify all the newsletters for easy deletion.

Copying everyone onto an email chain could be viewed as polite and courteous — or annoying, depending on whether the message topic is relevant to you. Sure, it’s a good idea to CC everyone in the office about an important policy that applies to all staff but maybe not about a meeting about Bring Your Child to Work Day if you don’t have kids.

In Outlook there’s a hack to filter out all those emails where you’re not the main recipient. Go to the Home tab, click “Rules,” and then “Create” a rule. Go to Advanced Options, and tick “where my name is in the cc box.” For the next step, you can tick the box to move it to a folder, or even permanently delete it if you’re feeling confident.

Gmail users can do something similar with the search function. Type cc: and your email address.

Perhaps you’ve tried out all these various hacks and whittled down your backlog but still have many more that you haven’t gone through. Then it could be time to consider the nuclear option: delete everything.

The benefit of this approach is that it really does provide you with a blank slate. You’ll have no more mental anxiety if you don’t have any more messages to worry about. The drawback, of course, is that you might lose any messages that might be important or precious.

___

Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech

source

TOKYO (Reuters) – The operator of the Uniqlo global clothing chain reported first quarter results on Thursday that trailed analyst forecasts as a sharp decline in profit in China overshadowed strong sales in its home market of Japan.

Fast Retailing said operating profit rose 7.4% to 157.6 billion yen ($996.84 million) in the three months through November from a year earlier. That was slightly below a LSEG consensus forecast of 160 billion yen drawn from six analysts.

Fast Retailing maintained its full-year operating profit forecast of 530 billion yen, on course for a fourth year of record earnings.

Known for inexpensive, durable fleeces and cotton shirts, Fast Retailing has long been regarded as a bellwether for consumer spending in Japan and more recently China, where it has more than 900 Uniqlo stores on the mainland.

Domestic sales have gotten a boost from a surge in duty-free shopping amid a tourism boom in Japan fuelled by a weak yen.

But sales growth has cooled in China, prompting the company to scale back store openings and adopt a scrap-and-build strategy to turn around underperforming locations with redesigned stores.

Improved profit margins and international brand awareness helped drive the previous year’s record results. But the company remains vulnerable to change in weather and fashion tastes.

Japanese sales were boosted by cold weather in December that increased demand for thermals, but in China, unseasonably warm temperatures resulted in flat sales in October and November, the company said.

Results were also strong in North America and Europe where Fast Retailing is mounting an aggressive expansion strategy to fulfil its aim to become the world’s No. 1 clothing brand. In the southern United States, it opened five Uniqlo stores in Texas in October alone.

In its home market, it has also become a pacesetter for wages in the service industry.

Keen to retain good workers, Fast Retailing said on Wednesday it will institute an aggressive increase in employee pay in Japan – one that follows on from a hike in 2023 that helped shake up the nation’s long moribund wage outlook.

Wages for full-time headquarters and sales staff will rise by as much as 11% from March, while annual salaries for new employees will increase by about 10%, the company said.

($1 = 158.1000 yen)

(Reporting by Rocky Swift; Editing by Edwina Gibbs, Jamie Freed and Christian Schmollinger)

source

BANGKOK (AP) — Nearly all of the world’s 35,000 online pharmacies are being run illegally and consumers who use them risk getting ineffective or dangerous drugs, according to the U.S. Trade Representative’s annual report on “ notorious markets.” The report also singled out 19 countries over concerns about counterfeit or pirated products.

The report also named about three dozen online retailers, many of them in China or elsewhere in Asia that it said are allegedly engaged in selling counterfeit products or other illegal activities.

The report says 96% of online pharmacies were found to be violating the law, many operating without a license and selling medicines without prescriptions and safety warnings.

Their websites often look like legitimate e-commerce platforms, often with false claims that they are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, said the report, released Wednesday. The FDA and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration have both issued warnings about risks of buying prescription medicines from such sources.

It cited a survey by the Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies’ Global Foundation that found nearly one in four Americans who have used online pharmacies reported having encountered substandard, fake or harmful medicines.

Last year, Federal prosecutors reported that a network of illegal drug sellers based in the U.S., the Dominican Republic and India had packaged potentially deadly synthetic opioids into pills disguised as common prescription drugs and sold millions of them through fake online drugstores, federal prosecutors said Monday. At least nine people died of narcotics poisoning between August 2023 and June 2024 after consuming the counterfeit pills, the indictment said.

Apart from the risks of using drugs that may contain inert ingredients or those that could cause allergies, the medicines are sometimes made in unsanitary conditions, said the report, which did not give annual statistics for those who may have died or otherwise been harmed.

The USTR’s annual report cited examples from inside the United States, but and also mentioned risks of imported ingredients including fentanyl from China. Many of the illicit online pharmacies are based outside the U.S.

The “Notorious Markets List” did laud progress in fighting counterfeit and pirated goods.

In one case, U.S. authorities, industry groups and the police collaborated in shutting down a Hanoi, Vietnam-based piracy ring, Fmovies, and other related piracy sites, in July and August.

The report said the world’s then-largest pirated movies site had drawn more than 6.7 billion visits from January 2023 to June 2024.

In another Vietnam-linked case, two people operating pirate television platform BestBuyIPTV were convicted and ordered to pay fines and forfeit property.

The report also cited crackdowns on online piracy in Brazil and the United Kingdom and busts of sellers of counterfeit purses, clothing and shoes in Kuwait.

But problems remain with cyberlockers that thwart efforts to restrict piracy of movies and other content and of so-called “bulletproof” internet service providers, or ISPs, that promise people using them leeway for using pirate sites, it said.

One such ISP is Avito, a Russian-based ad platform that allegedly lets sellers advertise counterfeit products.

Baidu Wangpan, a cloud storage service of China’s largest search engine provider, Baidu, was named for allegedly failing to enforce or being slow to act on copyright protection.

The report also pointed to social-commerce site Pinduoduo and to Douyin Mall, a Chinese online platform owned by Tiktok owner ByteDance. It said the shopping platforms have sought to build up protections but that they still host many counterfeit goods.

It also named Shopee, a Singapore-based online and mobile e-commerce site, saying some country-focused platforms serving Southeast Asia and South American had better track records in fighting piracy than others.

IndiaMART, an big business-to-business marketplace in India, still offers a slew of counterfeit products, it said.

While a large share of theft of intellectual property has moved online, the report also highlighted real world locations notorious for selling counterfeit products, including markets in Turkey, bazaars in the United Arab Emirates and Saigon Square Shopping Mall in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City.

The report said Bangkok’s MBK Center, a huge mall of about 2,000 stores, had actively cracked down on counterfeiting, though such products still can be found there.

source

(Reuters) – U.S. hedge fund Saba Capital Management said on Thursday it would offer shareholders of UK’s Herald Investment Trust a full cash exit at 99% of their net asset value, in a bid to win over its shareholders’ approval for a board overhaul.

Saba, founded and run by star activist investor Boaz Weinstein, said last month it wanted to overhaul the boards of seven British investment trusts over performances it said ranged from “underwhelming” to “disastrous”.

“Saba would support further changes so this cash exit would be overseen by a fully independent Board and would not expect it to occur for at least a year thereafter, ensuring portfolio value is maximized,” the hedge fund said in a statement.

Saba’s plans, which include nominating Weinstein to the board of one fund and one of its lead portfolio managers, Paul Kazarian, to the other six funds’ boards, have faced a lot of pushback.

The other trusts it is targeting include Baillie Gifford US Growth Trust, CQS Natural Resources Growth & Income, Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust, Keystone Positive Change, Henderson Opportunities Trust and European Smaller Companies Trust.

(Reporting by Yamini Kalia in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich)

source

LAS VEGAS (AP) — So much of the technology showcased at CES includes gadgets made to improve consumers’ lives — whether by leveraging AI to make devices that help people become more efficient, by creating companions to cure loneliness or by providing tools that help people with mental and physical health.

But not all innovation is good, according to a panel of self-described dystopia experts that has judged some products as “Worst in Show.” The award that no company wants to win calls out the “least repairable, least private, and least sustainable products on display.”

“We’re seeing more and more of these things that have basically surveillance technology built into them, and it enables some cool things,” Liz Chamberlain, director of sustainability at the e-commerce site iFixit told The Associated Press. “But it also means that now we’ve got microphones and cameras in our washing machines, refrigerators and that really is an industry-wide problem.”

The fourth annual contest announced its decisions Thursday.

Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, awarded the Ultrahuman Rare Luxury Smart Ring the title of “least repairable.”

The rings, which come in colors like dune and desert sand, cost $2,200. Wiens said the jewelry “looks sleek but hides a major flaw: its battery only lasts 500 charges.” Worse, he said, is the fact that replacing the battery is impossible without destroying the device entirely.

“Luxury items may be fleeting, but two years of use for $2,200 is a new low,” he said.

Bosch’s “Revol” crib uses sensors, cameras and AI that the company says can help monitor vital signs like how an infant is sleeping, their heart and respiratory rates and more. The crib can also rock gently if the baby needs help falling asleep and signal to parents if a blanket or other object is interfering with breathing.

The company says users can how and where their data is stored. Bosch also says the crib can be transformed into a desk as children get older.

But EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn said the crib preys on parents’ fears and “collects excessive data about babies via a camera, microphone, and even a radar sensor.”

“Parents expect safety and comfort — not surveillance and privacy risks — in their children’s cribs,” she said in the report.

Although AI is everywhere at CES, Stacey Higginbotham, a policy Fellow at Consumer Reports, felt that SoundHound AI’s In-Car Commerce Ecosystem, powered by its Automotive AI, pushes it to unnecessary extremes.

The feature “increases energy consumption, encourages wasteful takeout consumption and distracts drivers—all while adding little value,” Higginbotham said. That landed the in-car system as “least sustainable” on the list.

TP-Link’s Archer BE900 router won for “least secure” of CES. The company is a top-selling router brand in the U.S. But its products are vulnerable to hacking, said Paul Roberts, founder of The Security Ledger.

“By Chinese law, TP-Link must report security flaws to the government before alerting the public, creating a significant national security risk,” he said. “Yet TP-Link showcased its Archer BE900 router at CES without addressing these vulnerabilities.”

The awards also feature a category called “who asked for this?” Top of that list was Samsung’s Bespoke AI Washing Machine, which Nathan Proctor, senior director of U.S. PIRG, a consumer advocacy group, said is filled “with features no one needs,” including the ability to make phone calls.

“These add-ons only make the appliance more expensive, fragile, and harder to repair,” he said.

Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of The Repair Association called the LG “AI Home Inside 2.0 Refrigerator with ThinkQ” the worst product overall. The fridge adds “flashy features,” Gordon-Byrne said, including a screen and internet connection.

“But these come at a cost,” Gordon-Byrne said. “Shorter software support, higher energy consumption, and expensive repairs reduce the fridge’s practical lifespan, leaving consumers with an expensive, wasteful gadget.”

source

By Marianna Parraga and Kemol King

HOUSTON/GEORGETOWN (Reuters) – Guyana’s oil exports rose 54% last year to some 582,000 barrels per day (bpd), fueled by European refiners’ demand for easy-to-process sweet crudes to replace some Middle Eastern grades, according to traders and shipping data from financial firm LSEG.

Since it started exporting oil in early 2020, the burgeoning oil nation has emerged as the fifth largest Latin American crude exporter after Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia.

But unlike Latin America’s usual offer of heavy sour oil, Guyana’s lighter and sweeter crude grades have carved out a rising share in Europe, where most refineries are not as complex as the majority of Latin American and U.S. Gulf Coast plants that turn heavy grades into motor fuels.

“Europe is the ideal market for Guyana’s crudes,” said a trader of Latin American grades, who was not authorized to speak to media.

Guyana’s three crude grades – Liza, Unity Gold and Payara Gold – have been tested and adopted faster in Europe than in any other region due to proximity, quality and easy access to sellers, he added.

In 2024, 66% of Guyana’s crude exports or some 388,000 bpd went to Europe, compared with 62% the previous year, the shipping data showed.

Guyana’s oil began gaining favor in Europe in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which pushed many refiners to avoid sanctioned Russian crude and seek alternative supplies.    

Last year, attacks in the Red Sea affected oil flows from the Middle East, giving crudes from Guyana and Brazil better chances of finding buyers in Europe, said Homayoun Falakshahi, a senior analyst of crude markets at data analytics platform Kpler.

“Higher freight costs to move oil from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean or Northwest Europe have made Guyanese crude comparatively more interesting for European refiners,” he added.

OPENING ROUTES

Producers in Guyana also almost doubled shipments to the United States last year to some 23,000 bpd, while exports to Asia increased in smaller magnitude to around 139,000 bpd, the LSEG data showed. Sales to Latin America and the Caribbean were almost unchanged at around 32,000 bpd. 

The rise in exports has been possible due to a consortium led by U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil expanding output rapidly through three floating production facilities, with a fourth expected to add about 250,000 bpd of capacity this year.

Exxon’s Fawley refinery in the United Kingdom remains the single largest taker of Guyanese crude in Europe, according to Kpler.    

Exxon, Hess and CNOOC, which control all oil and gas output in Guyana, individually sell the barrels they are entitled to, while the Guyanese government every year awards a marketing contract to allocate its portion of output.

For 2025, European trading firms BB Energy and JE Energy won that contract for a second year in a row in a competitive auction where global producers also participated. The government this time secured a larger premium over market prices, it said in October. 

Since the two trading firms are based in the United Kingdom, their successful marketing of the crudes in Europe was expected, Guyana’s energy minister Vickram Bharrat told Reuters.

“However, there is no preference,” he said, referring to the markets the government would like its oil to reach. 

The Exxon-led consortium has three active projects – Liza 1 and 2, and Payara – that were producing around 675,000 bpd late last year following upgrades. The next project, Yellowtail, is set to start this year once Exxon receives a fourth floating production vessel in the coming months.

Exxon did not provide comment on its Guyanese crude marketing efforts, but last month said it expects that 60% of its upstream production by 2030 will come from “advantaged assets” including Guyana.

(Reporting by Marianna Parraga in Houston and Kemol King in Georgetown; Editing by Nia Williams)

source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Wednesday that Nippon Steel’s blocked acquisition of U.S. Steel received a “thorough analysis” by an interagency national security review body that was sent to President Joe Biden.

Yellen, in a live interview on CNBC, said she could not discuss specifics of the review of the merger blocked by Biden last week that is now the subject of a lawsuit that alleges that the review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) was not conducted in good faith and was prejudiced by Biden.

“I think, as you know, there is ongoing litigation over this case, and as head of CFIUS, I regret there is very little substantive that I can say to you about this,” Yellen said. “Other than that, CFIUS did analyze the specifics, as it always does of this situation, and prepared a thorough analysis to go to the president.”

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

source

By Iain Withers

LONDON (Reuters) – U.S. stocks look set to extend their outperformance this year driven by the financial firepower of big tech firms and investor friendly policies under a second Donald Trump presidency, the CEO of State Street’s asset management arm said on Wednesday.

Some investors believe Trump’s agenda of tax cuts and deregulation can further fuel so-called U.S. exceptionalism – which saw U.S. stocks widen their valuation gap over rivals last year – despite potential disruption from policies such as higher tariffs and concerns that the market is in bubble territory.

Big technology firms that have driven up U.S. stock indexes can continue to do so due to their large investment budgets, Yie-Hsin Hung, CEO of State Street Global Advisors (SSGA), one of the world’s biggest asset managers with $4.7 trillion under management, told a media event in London.

“You have the advent of all these new technologies whether it is AI, quantum computing… The earnings adjustments they’ve made as a result of it suggest that that level of exceptionalism has a good chance of continuing,” Hung said.

SSGA, known for its passive, index-tracking funds, believes Trump’s policies will be “generally constructive” for investors but it is preparing for a “fair amount of volatility”, she added.

Hung was speaking at an event to launch a SSGA exchange-traded fund (ETF) that offers European investors access to Saudi government bonds and will be partly listed on the London Stock Exchange.

State Street said that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth Public Investment Fund would invest $200 million in the ETF.

Saudi Arabia has drawn considerable interest from overseas investors seeking to tap into the kingdom’s drive to diversify its economy away from oil but the country’s human rights record has long been the subject of criticism.

Hung said SSGA engaged with clients on environmental, social and governance issues, but that it was ultimately up to them what they invested in. “We subscribe to the notion of providing choice to our clients,” she said.

Saudi Arabia denies accusations of human rights abuses and says it protects its national security through its laws.

($1 = 0.8051 pounds)

(Reporting by Iain Withers; Editing by Tommy Reggiori Wilkes, Kirsten Donovan)

source

By Karen Brettell

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Longer-term U.S. Treasury yields have surged to multi-month highs, outpacing a rise in shorter-dated yields, with some of the disparity reflecting anticipation that the incoming Trump administration will need to change the current focus on relying more on short-term debt, traders say.

President Joe Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has increased sales of Treasury bills, debt maturing in one year or less, which have seen strong demand from money market investors.

But that has taken the portion of bills above the recommended levels for the overall debt outstanding, a process that will likely need to be addressed by President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Treasury chief Scott Bessent.

“The market is building more term premium into the long end to account for the fiscal situation, the deficit, and potentially a lot more issuance in the long end of the curve as they unwind the Yellen policy,” said Dan Mulholland, head of rates – trading and sales at Crews & Associates.

Ten-year yields were below those on two-year notes until around September and have been rising at a faster pace since June. Ten-year yields reached 4.73% on Wednesday, the highest since April, while two-year yields have held relatively steady at 4.27%.

Traders say that abundant supply of short-term debt was a factor keeping the U.S. Treasury yield curve inverted for longer than is usual, from around July 2022 to September, which is now being reversed.

“That kept the yield curve inverted, and now I think there’s a feeling that that’s not the way to do it,” said Tom di Galoma, head of fixed income trading at Curvature Securities.

An expected increase in longer-dated debt is not the only factor pushing yields higher. Trump’s policies are expected to boost growth and potentially inflation, both of which will lead to higher interest rates.

The Treasury often uses sales of short-term debt as a kind of shock absorber that it can increase or decrease when it faces large swings in its borrowing needs. But longer-term, market observers say it’s unwise to rely too much on short-term debt, as it increases refinancing risks if market conditions turn.

Outstanding Treasury debt has surged to $36 trillion from $23 trillion in late 2019 as the government relies more on debt to finance spending and plug its budget deficit, which analysts expect will continue to worsen for the foreseeable future.

Treasury bills now account for 22% of debt, above the 15-20% recommendation by the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee.

They reached 25% in 2020 as the government ramped up spending related to COVID-related business closures. They then fell back to around 15% in 2022 but have taken a larger share of overall debt issuance since.

While the Treasury is not expected to immediately increase its longer-dated debt auctions, market participants have begun pricing for the likely eventuality and will watch the U.S. government’s quarterly refunding announcements for signals on when it will likely begin.

“Trump’s Treasury Secretary is not going to cause disruption in the market by suddenly changing the auction sizes, but it could be that in late April, early May, that we start to see announcements for higher coupon auction sizes,” said Will Compernolle, macro strategist at FHN Financial. He added that increases in longer-dated debt may begin in the summer.

(Reporting By Karen Brettell; editing by Alden Bentley and Mark Heinrich)

source