RIYADH: Saudi East Pipes Integrated Co. for Industry has turned to losses of SR3.25 million ($865,000) in this fiscal year, as project delays and supply chain disruptions weighed on sales.
The company, which made a profit of SR148 million with SR935.5 million in revenue in the last fiscal year, saw its revenue drop by 36 percent to SR597 million in the year ended Mar. 31, 2022, according to a bourse filing.
The firm said the results were driven by “delays in releasing and awarding key projects by major clients” in addition to “supply chain interruptions, resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Additionally, a sharp increase in the costs of raw materials dragged down its gross profit from SR230 million to SR35 million, an 85-percent decline year-on-year.
East Pipes, which joined the Saudi stock exchange earlier this year, was established in 2010 and specializes in manufacturing steel pipes.
Ahead of listing, the pipe manufacturer had raised SR504 million of proceeds from an initial public offering.
HAWTHORNE, California: SpaceX, the rocket ship company run by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has fired several employees involved in an open letter that blasted the colorful billionaire for his behavior, according to media reports. The reports published Friday cited an email from Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president, saying the company had terminated employees who put together and circulated the letter. The letter writers denounced Musk for actions that they said are a “frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks.” The New York Times was the first outlet to report the purge, based on information from three employees familiar with the situation. The employees were not named. It’s unclear how many SpaceX workers lost their jobs, but Shotwell left no doubt that the company believed they had crossed an unacceptable line. “The letter, solicitations and general process made employees feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their views,” Shotwell wrote in her email, according to the Times . “”We have too much critical work to accomplish and no need for this kind of overreaching activism.” The firings occurred Thursday — the same day Musk addressed Twitter employees for the first time about his $44 billion deal to add that social media service to his business empire. The purchase is in limbo while Musk tries to determine whether Twitter has been concealing the number of fake accounts on its platform. As the Twitter drama unfolded, another report emerged t hat Musk had paid $250,000 to a flight attendant to quash a potential sexual harassment lawsuit against him. Musk denied the sexual harassment allegations, and Shotwell last month sent out an email to SpaceX employees saying she believe the accusations were false. In recent weeks, Musk has also crudely mocked the looks of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on Twitter and posted a poop emoji during an online discussion with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. The open letter from SpaceX employees criticizing Musk asserted that some of his tweets sent out to his 98 million followers cast the company in a poor light. “As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX — every tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company,” the open letter said. “It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values.”
RIYADH: The Red Sea Development Co. is using a marine spatial planning simulation — utilizing software specially developed in Saudi Arabia — to assess the developmental impact and enhance biodiversity. Developed in partnership with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the technology plans, collects and analyzes oceanographic data that influences marine and terrestrial ecosystems and tracks net conservation benefits. “Marine spatial planning helps the company decide which island to develop and which is most important to protect by integrating expert opinion, ecological principles, and a software-based decision support tool,” Lina Eyouni, environmental physical science manager, TRSDC, told Arab News on the occasion of UN World Oceans Day on June 8.
According to a TRSDC scientific paper titled “Reconciling Tourism Development and Conservation Outcomes Through Marine Spatial Planning for a Saudi Giga-Project in the Red Sea,” published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Marine Science, the company is developing comprehensive plans for enhancing coral reefs, which involves growing coral nurseries and breeding healthy corals. The master plan for the development conserves 58 percent of the site’s marine area, with the development footprint only 5 percent of the total area. The paper noted that the resulting conservation to development ratio of 10:1 was unprecedented in any documented coastal development plan.
• The company is developing comprehensive plans for enhancing coral reefs, which involves growing coral nurseries and breeding healthy corals.
• The master plan for the development conserves 58 percent of the site’s marine area, with the development footprint only 5 percent of the total area.
• The paper noted that the resulting conservation to development ratio of 10:1 was unprecedented in any documented coastal development plan.
“The MSP’s primary goal is to utilize the marine environment in a way that won’t harm the ecosystem by reconciling all activities and development elements assessed by the master plan with net positive conservation outcomes,” said Bandar Makhdom, environmental engagement manager, TRSDC. He added: “Through the MSP, activities generating positive and negative interactions were uncovered, as well as minor tactical adjustments to avoid negative synergies in the ecosystem.” To mark the UN World Oceans Day, the company participated in a workshop titled “The Role of Scientific Research and Cooperation with Relevant Authorities in Preserving the Environments of the Red Sea,” sponsored by Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Environment, Water and Agriculture Abdul Rahman Al-Fadhli.
“The company is contributing to this year’s theme by building cross-multiple partnerships that will enable the company to achieve its goal of 30 percent net conservation benefit throughout the project,” said Eyouni. TRSDC is using adaptive ecosystem-based management for the environmental regulatory system, which will use observational data and associated modeling to provide scientific guidance for developing and protecting the ecosystem. “TRSDC destinations will be environmentally smart by utilizing the latest technology to enhance visitors’ experiences. Additionally, the data will be uploaded and stored into a smart environmental platform to support science-informed adaptive ecosystem-based management,” she added.
President Vladimir Putin asserted Russia’s strength and resilience on Friday against a Western world that he accused of colonial arrogance and trying to crush his country with an economic “blitzkrieg” of sanctions, Reuters has reported.
Addressing the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a showcase event being held this year with almost no Western participation, he returned time and again to the theme of Russia’s sovereignty in a new global order:
“We are strong people and can cope with any challenge. Like our ancestors, we will solve any problem, the entire thousand-year history of our country speaks of this.”
Putin drew applause when he reaffirmed his determination to continue the “special military operation” in Ukraine that has unleashed a barrage of Western economic sanctions.
He said the main aim was to defend “our” people in the largely Russian-speaking Donbas region of eastern Ukraine — a justification that Kyiv and the West dismiss as a baseless pretext for a campaign that has already cost
thousands of lives and led to the occupation of parts of Ukraine far beyond the Donbas.
In his 73-minute speech, Putin said Russian soldiers were also fighting to defend Russia’s own “rights to secure development.”
“Against a backdrop of increasing risks for us and threats, Russia’s decision to conduct a special military operation was forced — difficult, of course, but forced and necessary.” ’New World Order'
A recorded video address by Chinese President Xi Jinping praising Chinese-Russian cooperation underlined Putin’s contention that an era of American domination is at an end.
Putin said the UnS considered itself “God’s emissary on Earth,” and that Russia was taking its place in a new world order whose rules would be set by “strong and sovereign states.”
He called the campaign in Ukraine the action of a “sovereign country that has the right to defend its security,” and accused the West of “active military appropriation of Ukrainian territory.”
But he appeared to acknowledge the scale of destruction being wrought, while absolving Russian forces.
In a two-hour question-and-answer session after his speech, he evoked Stalingrad, the Soviet city razed by attritional urban warfare in World War Two, now renamed Volgograd.
“We must not turn those cities and towns that we liberate into a semblance of Stalingrad,” he said. “This is a natural thing that our military thinks about when organizing hostilities.”
Putin also said strikes against residential areas were crimes against humanity.
Ukraine says Russian forces are responsible for thousands of civilian deaths, the obliteration of towns such as Mariupol, and the displacement of a third of its peacetime population.
Russia denies attacking civilian targets, and says allegations that it has perpetrated war crimes are based on Ukrainian and Western fabrications. Cyber Attack Shortly before Putin was due to begin speaking, the Kremlin said a “denial of service” cyberattack had disabled the Forum’s accreditation and admission systems, forcing him to delay the scheduled start by an hour.
Putin dismissed suggestions that Russia was responsible for a surge in global prices of basic foodstuffs with the phrase that a failure to export five or six tons of Ukrainian wheat and six or seven tons of corn “doesn’t change the weather.”
He said Russia was ready to guarantee the transit of ships exporting Ukrainian grain across the Black Sea, but that Ukraine had five or six alternative routes — through Belarus, Poland or Romania.
Ukraine has been using much more cumbersome road, rail and river routes to try to get around the closure notably of Odesa, its main deep-sea port, where it fears a Russian attack.
But their capacity is at best a third of the more than 6 million tons a month of grain and oilseeds that were shipped from Odesa in the past.
ABU DHABI: Nawah Energy Company has been given the go-ahead to operate a unit of the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant by the UAE’s independent nuclear regulator.
The Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation has issued an operating licence for unit 3 of the facility to the subsidiary of the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation.
The licence, with an estimated duration of 60 years, authorizes Nawah to commission and operate Unit 3 of the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant.
"This is another historic moment for the UAE, being the first Arab country in the region to operate a nuclear power plant and culminating efforts of 14 years in building such a programme,” said Ambassador Hamad Al Kaabi, UAE’s permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency and deputy chairman of the Board of Management of FANR.
"The decision announced today follows many years of intensive work and collaboration with national and international stakeholders such as International Atomic Energy Agency, Republic of Korea and other international regulatory bodies," Al Kaabi added.
In February 2020 and March 2021, FANR issued the licences for Unit 1 and Unit 2, respectively, of Barakah Nuclear Power Plant and maintained its regulatory oversight until the commercial operations of the units.
The UAE is currently building four units at the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant, and the project’s overall construction rate is 97 percent as follows: Unit 1: commercially operational; Unit 2: commercially operational; Unit 3: commissioning phase; Unit 4: 92 percent.
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden on Friday told a climate conference for major economies that Russia’s war in Ukraine shows the shift to renewable energy is a matter of national security as well as vital to preventing climate crisis.
“Russia’s brutal and unprovoked assault on its neighbor Ukraine has fueled a global energy crisis and sharpened the need to achieve longterm reliable energy security and security,” Biden said.
“The good news is that climate security and energy security go hand in hand.”