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SINGAPORE — Researchers who warned half a dozen robot manufacturers in January about nearly 50 vulnerabilities in their home, business and industrial robots, say only a few of the problems have been addressed.

The researchers, Cesar Cerrudo and Lucas Apa of cyber security firm IOActive, said the vulnerabilities would allow hackers to spy on users, disable safety features and make robots lurch and move violently, putting users and bystanders in danger.

While they say there are no signs that hackers have exploited the vulnerabilities, they say the fact that the robots were hacked so easily and the manufacturers' lack of response raise questions about allowing robots in homes, offices and factories.

"Our research shows proof that even non-military robots could be weaponised to cause harm," Apa said in an interview.

"These robots don't use bullets or explosives, but microphones, cameras, arms and legs. The difference is that they will be soon around us and we need to secure them now before it's too late."

Some of the robot manufacturers defended themselves, saying they had fixed some or all of the issues rose.

Apa's comments come in the wake of a letter signed by more than 100 leading robotic experts urging the United Nations to ban the development of killer military robots, or autonomous weapons.

Apa, a senior security consultant, said that of the six manufacturers contacted, only one, Rethink Robotics, said some of the problems had been fixed. He said he had not been able to confirm that as his team does not have access to that particular robot.

A spokesman for Rethink Robotics, which makes the Baxter and Sawyer assembly-line robots, said all but two issues — in the education and research versions of its robots — had been fixed.

Apa said a review of updates from the other five manufacturers — Universal Robots of Denmark, SoftBank Robotics and Asratec Corp of Japan, Ubtech of China, and Robotis Inc. of South Korea — led him to believe none of the issues he had raised had been fixed.

Asratec said that software released for its robots so far was limited to "hobby use sample programmes", and it believed IOActive was pointing to security vulnerabilities in those. Software it planned to release for commercial use would be different, it said.

SoftBank Robotics said it had already identified the vulnerabilities and fixed them. Ubtech said it had "fully addressed any concerns raised by IoActive that do not limit our developers from programming" their robots. 

Universal Robots did not respond to e-mailed requests for comment. Robotis Inc declined to comment. 

The slow reaction by the robot industry was not surprising, said Joshua Ziering, founder of drone manufacturer Kittyhawk.io. "A new technology bursts on to the market and people fail to secure it," he said.

Alarming threat

Cyber security experts said the robot vulnerabilities were alarming, and cyber criminals could use them to disrupt factories by ransomware attacks, or with robots slowed down or forced to embed flaws in the products they are programmed to build.

"The potential impact to companies, and even countries, could be massive," said Nathan Wenzler, chief security strategist at AsTech, a San Francisco-based security consulting company, "should an attacker exploit the vulnerability within the applications that control these robots”.

Even in the home, danger lurks, said Apa, demonstrating how a 43.18cm tall Alpha 2 robot from Ubtech could be programmed to violently jab a screwdriver.

"Maybe it's small and it's not really going to hurt right now, but the trend is that the robots are going to be more powerful," he said. "We tested industrial ones which are really heavy and powerful, and some of the attacks work with them."

Apa and Cerrudo released their initial findings in January.

This week, they released details about the specific vulnerabilities they found, including one case where they mix several of those vulnerabilities together to hijack a Universal Robot factory robot, making it lurch about and be a potential threat.

PARIS — French oil giant Total said on Monday that it would buy Maersk Oil, a unit of Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk, for $7.45 billion (6.35 billion euros).

The company said the deal would make Total the second-largest operator in the North Sea, with substantial operations in Britain, Norway and Denmark.

It will pay for the company with $4.95 billion in Total shares, while taking on $2.5 billion of Maersk Oil's debt.

The boards of both companies have approved the deal.

Total said the acquisition would bolster its positions in the Gulf of Mexico, Algeria, Kenya and Kazakhstan.

"This transaction delivers an exceptional opportunity for Total to acquire, via an equity transaction, a company with high-quality assets which are an excellent fit with many of Total's core regions," Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanne said in a statement.

He said that once completed in the first quarter of 2018, the deal would generate some $400 million in cost savings and other synergies each year, which would immediately help to increase the combined group's cash flow and earnings per share.

"We are also very pleased that we will have a new anchor point in Denmark which will host our North Sea business unit and supervise our operations in Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands," Pouyanne said.

Investors will not
be 'enthused' 

Total embarked on a cost-saving drive three years ago in response to falling oil prices, but had recently signalled it was once again ready to pursue acquisitions.

Since 2014, oil prices have dropped dramatically and remained stubbornly low, a trend that has weighed heavily on the industry.

"We imagine the investors won't be overly enthused with the idea of buying more oil barrels when they are overly concerned with falling oil demand," said analysts at AllianceBernstein.

"Investors should however think of these as high-margin low-cost barrels" that will recoup costs even if the price of oil falls to $30 per barrel from its current level around $50.

It also noted the price in terms of output was nearly a third less than Shell sold its North Sea portfolio to Chrysaor earlier this year.

Shares in Total initially fell, but by afternoon were up 0.3 per cent at 42.76 euros per share while Paris's CAC 40 index was down 0.3 per cent. 

Shares in Maersk jumped by 3.3 per cent.

Ane Maersk Mc-Kinney Uggla, who heads the A.P. Moller Holding company, said "this is a very difficult, but right decision".

"Maersk Oil has for almost half a century been at the forefront of the Danish oil development, been vital to A.P. Moller-Maersk and to this very day plays a decisive role in the Danish and international oil and gas industry," she said.

The company had announced in September that it was splitting its transport and energy divisions as it faced headwinds in both sectors, while signalling that it would sell off its oil businesses.

It posted a heavy loss for 2016 after taking substantial write-downs on the value of its oil services division, which prompted board chairman Michael Pram Rasmussen to announce his resignation.

JOHANNESBURG — A South African court on Sunday ordered the government to allow the owner of the world's biggest private rhino herd to hold an online sale of rhino horn, which he aims to hold this week, his lawyer said.

John Hume has about 1,500 rhinos on his sprawling farm southeast of Johannesburg, where he breeds the animals.

White rhinos nearly went extinct last century but South African conservation efforts and private game farms have swelled their numbers in recent decades, though poachers are again putting them in danger.

Hume regularly cuts his rhinos' horns, which then grow back, and has built a large stockpile, some 500kg of which he plans to auction after in April successfully challenging government rules banning their sale.

He last week took South Africa's department of environmental affairs to court, as he had been issued with a permit which he said had not been handed to him.

"The court ordered they [the department of environmental affairs] should hand over the permit to us," Hume's lawyer Izak du Toit told Reuters, saying he would take collection of it on Monday.

South Africa is home to more than 80 per cent of the world's rhinos, whose population has been devastated by poaching for buyers in Vietnam and China, where it is coveted as an ingredient in traditional medicine.

Global trade in rhino horn is banned under a UN convention. That means any horn acquired legally in South Africa could not be exported, but conservationists have expressed concerns that domestic buyers could illicitly supply Asian markets.

Hume had said in papers to the high court seen by Reuters that the government was withholding already authorised permits for the sale of 264 horns in the August 21-24 auction.

The number of poached rhinos in South Africa fell by 13 to 529 between January and June compared with 2016, a trend welcomed with "cautious optimism" by the government in July.

But numbers had surged from 83 in 2008 to a record 1,215 in 2014 to meet burgeoning demand in newly affluent countries such as Vietnam, where the horns are used as status symbols and believed to contain aphrodisiac properties.

AMMAN — The Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) board of directors on Wednesday elected Jawad Anani as chairman of the board, according to the ASE website. Anani was appointed as a representative of the government in the ASE board as of July 26th, 2017.

ANFEH, Lebanon — At 93, Elias Al Najjar has spent half a century harvesting salt by hand from ponds on Lebanon's Mediterranean shore, but he and his colleagues fear their way of life is dying.

Traditional coastal salt production was once popular in Lebanon, but the fully artisanal practice now survives in just a single seaside town, Anfeh, around 70 kilometres north of Beirut.

Producers like Najjar say the sector has suffered a series of blows, from an exodus of pond owners during Lebanon's civil war, to the lifting of import tariffs.

"I used to produce 300 tonnes myself in the 1950s," the elderly man says.

"Now I make 30 tonnes maximum."
Anfeh's salt producers accuse the government of refusing them permits to repair their equipment in order to turf them off prime coastal real estate and make way for developers. 

"If they can't destroy the ponds, they want to make them unworkable so it's easier for fat cats to buy them to build resorts," says Hafez Jreij, 67.

"The land the ponds are on is going to be handed over to developers who want to build beach resorts."

The municipality confirmed to AFP that the central government is not giving any more permits.

But municipal spokeswoman Christiane Nicolas said the local council has no desire to destroy the sector.

"The government stopped collecting taxes on traditional salt production because it considered it an infringement on public property," she told AFP.

But she added: "There's no evidence the authorities want to hand over the coast to developers."

Seasonal process 

Salt extraction is a time-consuming process subject to the vagaries of weather, meaning it can only be practised around four months a year.

First, sea water is drawn into metre-deep concrete ponds via pumps powered by small windmills. 

The water sits in the ponds of up to 20 square metres for at least 20 days, evaporating to leave a salty liquid residue.

That salty water is then swept into shallower concrete pans, and left to concentrate further for another 10 days.

Setbacks 

Each day, producers sweep the sea water across the pan to ensure it dries evenly.

As the liquid disappears, blindingly white salt crystals emerge in lines, twinkling in the sunlight.

Jreij says Lebanon's traditional salt industry produced 50,000 tonnes a year during the sector's heyday between 1955 and 1975.

"Lebanon did not need to import salt, and the state imposed a 200  per cent tax on salt imports," he says.

But from 1975, when Lebanon's 15-year civil war erupted, the industry began suffering a series of setbacks.

Many pond owners were among the Lebanese who fled in waves over the years of the grinding conflict.

With their departure, production started to fall below demand, prompting the government in the 1990s to lift the import tax on foreign salt.

The decision made it hard for local producers to compete and, with the sector in free-fall, the government announced it considered many of the salt pans to be illegal construction on public coastline.

As a result, it stopped taxing income from salt production in 1994. 

And without tax receipts, municipalities started rejecting permit applications from producers to maintain their equipment, producers say. 

Those refusals prevent repairs on worn-down infrastructure, thereby killing the industry, they complain.

Jreij estimates half of all the salt pans in Anfeh are now unusable as a result of the 1994 decision.

Scraping by 

Jreij also said that local authorities tried to shut him down in 2015 and 2016 by claiming the sea water feeding the ponds was contaminated.

"We did laboratory tests on the water at extraction points and they all conformed to safety specifications," Jreij says.

Najjar, who said he had had a similar problem, showed to AFP the analysis results, carried out in Lebanon.

For now, producers in Anfeh are scraping by, selling salt to individual and industrial buyers at a rate of between $2-4 per kilogramme, much less than the price of imported salt.

Bigger battle
Fisherman Daniel Fares, 37, says he is a loyal customer of Jreij because the entire production process is transparent. 

"The sea is clean, and you know where the salt is coming from," he tells AFP. 

"I prefer it over imported salt because it has no additives, which makes it suitable for pickling sardines too," says Fares, who also sells some of Jreij's salt to his own customers for home use. 

Jreij sees the fight to preserve the salt ponds as part of a greater battle to protect Lebanon's coastline, much of which has been gobbled up by developers.

"Salt ponds don't produce waste, they don't block the way to the sea, and they don't block the beautiful view of the Mediterranean," he says.

"Resorts do all of that."

LONDON — Britain's unemployment rate has struck a new 42-year low, official data showed on Wednesday, as the uncertainty of Brexit boosts temporary hirings.

The rate dipped to 4.4 per cent in the three months to June to record the lowest level since 1975, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a statement. It had stood at 4.5 per cent in the quarter to May.

A total of 1.48 million people were recorded as unemployed at the end of June, down 157,000 compared with a year earlier, although growth in wages has been struggling to keep pace with inflation.

"The employment picture remains strong, with a new record high employment rate and another fall in the unemployment rate," said ONS Senior Labour Market Statistician Matt Hughes.

"Despite the strong jobs picture, however, real earnings continue to decline."

Employment reached an all-time high, rising by 125,000 to 32.07 million people in the three months to June.

"The headline figures shout growth and stability — and yet there's a huge amount of uncertainty on the ground, particularly due to Brexit," said David Morel, head of employment firm Tiger Recruitment.

"Against a backdrop of political and economic uncertainty, people are choosing to stay put rather than speculatively look for other jobs."

But he noted that "Brexit-related and broader economic uncertainty" was supporting the temporary jobs market as employers "have put their permanent hiring on hold".

KUWAIT CITY — Kuwaiti authorities on Tuesday reported a second oil slick off the Gulf state's shores days after saying another large spill was under control.

The new slick was spotted near the capital, some 60 kilometres north of the first spill, tweeted Sheikh Talal Khaled Al Sabah, spokesman for national oil conglomerate Kuwait Petroleum Corp. (KPC).

Kuwait's Environment Public Authority said the latest spill was about 1.6 kilometres long, adding that measures were being taken to contain it.

Private environmental group Kuwait Green Line said on Tuesday that new oil slicks had been spotted and the spill was spreading.

Last week, a large oil spill hit Kuwait's southern coast near Saudi Arabia and close to the joint Saudi-Kuwaiti offshore oilfield at Al Khafji.

Oil officials had said emergency workers managed to clean up most of the spill and that the situation was under control.

Precautionary measures were taken around vital installations in Al-Zour area where a huge $30-billion oil complex including a 615,000-barrel-per-day refinery is being built.

The area also has two power and water desalination plants which were declared safe from contamination.

The source of the crude spill has not yet been determined but officials said samples were sent abroad for examination.

Kuwaiti media on Sunday quoted local oil experts as saying the spill came from an old 50-kilometre-long pipeline from Al Khafji.

The experts estimated that as many as 35,000 barrels of crude may have leaked into the waters off Al Zour.

Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, located south of Kuwait along the Gulf coast, said slicks from the spill had not reached their waters.

The KPC said teams from Saudi Arabian Chevron and Oil Spill Response Limited (OSRL) had joined the coastal clean-up operations.

OPEC member Kuwait pumps around 2.7 million barrels per day of crude oil, providing around 85 per cent of its public revenues.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia and Iraq are to launch a joint trade commission, the Saudi Cabinet announced on Monday, in a sign of a thaw in ties between the two neighbours.

“The Cabinet has decided to approve the establishment of the Saudi-Iraqi Coordinating Commission and to delegate the Saudi minister of trade and investments to sign on behalf of the kingdom,” read a statement carried by state-run SPA news agency.

The two countries went a quarter century without diplomatic relations, which were cut following Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait after which Saudi Arabia served as the launchpad for a US-led coalition to oust Iraqi forces.

Saudi Arabia and Iraq, OPEC’s top two producers, were both dealt a serious blow when oil prices plummeted following a global production glut in 2014. 

Riyadh and Baghdad showed an improvement in ties in June, when Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi visited the kingdom followed by a series of visits by high-ranking officials. 

Iraq’s Energy Minister Jabbar Al Luaybi and his Saudi counterpart Khalid Al Falih last Thursday jointly announced they would strengthen their commitment to pledged oil production cuts and vowed to ensure coordination of their nations’ oil policies.

OPEC and non-OPEC members have pledged to cut back on production in an effort to stabilise market prices. 

While Saudi Arabia met its production limits in July, Iraq only made one-third of the cut it had pledged, according to a report published by the International Energy Agency. 

Influential Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr, who led a militia that fought against the US occupation of Iraq, last month made a rare trip to Saudi Arabia, a key regional ally of Washington. 

The rekindling of ties comes at a time of diplomatic crisis in the Gulf after Saudi Arabia cut all ties with neighbouring Qatar in June, accusing the emirate of supporting Islamist extremists and working with Shiite Iran. 

Qatar, the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, has denied the allegations.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia's budget deficit halved in the first six months of this year, the finance ministry said on Sunday, following sweeping spending cuts and a stabilisation in oil prices.

The ultra-conservative kingdom has moved to diversify its traditionally oil-dependent economy following a sharp fall in crude prices.

The budget deficit dropped by 51 per cent to 72 billion riyals ($19.2 billion) in the first half of 2017, the finance ministry announced.

"This result reflects an improvement in the management of public finances as a result of economic reform introduced through Vision 2030," said Saad Al-Shahrani, a high-ranking ministry official. 

The Vision 2030 plan, announced by the kingdom last year, aims to develop Saudi Arabia's industrial and investment base and boost small-and medium-sized businesses to create local jobs and reduce reliance on oil revenue.

It is the second budget report released by Riyadh since the authorities announced in May they would begin issuing the figures on a quarterly basis to boost transparency.

The kingdom has regularly posted budget deficits since 2014, following a slump in oil prices.

Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude exporter, in December projected a budget deficit of $53 billion for this year.

Revenues for the first half of the fiscal year were up 29 per cent to 308 billion riyals ($82.1 billion) from the same period last year.

Spending in the first six months dropped 2 per cent to 380.7 billion riyals.

As part of its reforms, Saudi Arabia is due to introduce value-added tax (VAT) in early 2018 along with the UAE and Qatar.

Three other Gulf states — Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman — plan to follow at a later date.

Riyadh announced in June it had begun taxing foreigners working in the private sector as part of its fiscal reforms.

The country is also preparing to sell just under 5 per cent of energy giant Aramco next year.

Saudi Arabia raised $17.5 billion in its first international bond offering in October 2016.