A cyber-attack Tuesday that hit companies across the world is similar to a ransomware attack last month that targeted hospitals in Britain, although the most recent hack was potentially “more sophisticated,” according to the European police agency.

Europol director Rob Wainwright called the hack “another serious ransomware attack.” He said it bore resemblances to the previous “WannaCry” hack, but also showed indications of a “more sophisticated attack capability intended to exploit a range of vulnerabilities.”

The WannaCry hack sent a wave of crippling ransomware to hospitals across Britain in May, causing the hospitals to divert ambulances and cancel surgeries. Researchers eventually found a way to thwart the hack, but only after around 300 people had already paid the ransom.

The cyberattack Tuesday caused disruptions at companies in 64 different countries, including America’s Merck pharmaceutical company, Russia’s Rosneft oil giant, British advertising agency WPP and French industrial group Saint-Gobain.

It also disrupted operations Wednesday at India’s largest container port, adding to the headaches of governments and businesses affected by so-called ransomware code that takes a user’s data hostage until the victim agrees to pay for its release.

The problems at Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai involved a terminal run by Danish shipping outfit A.P. Moller-Maersk.

From Europe to US

The company had said Tuesday as the attack was spreading largely in Europe and the United States that the malicious code was affecting terminals “in a number of ports.”

Australia’s Cyber Security Minister Dan Tehan told reporters Wednesday that officials have not yet confirmed the same computer virus was responsible for ransomware attacks on two Australian companies, but that “all indications would point to” that being the case.

Banks, government offices and airports in Ukraine were among the first to report the cyberattack.

A U.S. National Security Council spokesman said the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and other agencies are “working with public and private, domestic and international partners to respond to this event and provide technical information for prevention and remediation.”

“Individuals and organizations are discouraged from paying the ransom as this does not guarantee access will be restored,” the spokesman added.

Europol’s European Cybercrime Center has told anyone affected by Tuesday’s attack to report the crime to national police, and encouraged them not to pay any ransom requested by hackers.

Eternal Blue

The computer virus used in the attack includes code known as Eternal Blue, a tool developed by the NSA that exploited Microsoft’s Windows operating system and which was published on the internet in April by a group called Shadowbrokers. Microsoft released a patch in March to protect systems from that vulnerability.

Tim Rawlins, director of the Britain-based cybersecurity consultancy NCC Group, says these attacks continue to happen because people have not been keeping up with effectively patching their computers.

“This is a repeat WannaCry type of outbreak and it really comes down to the fact that people are not focusing on what they should be focusing on, the very simple premise of patching your systems,” Rawlins told VOA.

Jeff Seldin and Victor Beattie contributed to this report.

WATCH: What is ransomware?
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More than 80 years after Thailand introduced gambling laws, analysts say the nation is betting on legalizing casinos in hopes of boosting tourism and being a player in regional casino development. Gambling in Thailand is officially banned, apart from the state-run lottery and betting on horses at the Bangkok Turf Club; but, illegal betting and underground casinos have proliferated.

Visanu Vongsinsirikul, a lecturer in economics at Dhurakij Pandit University, and a specialist in the gaming industry, said a decision on casino gambling is likely after the next general elections, expected in late 2018.

“After the election this issue [of the casinos] will be raised again. When the election passes it means the government has the rights of the [electorate]. So the government will dare to make a decision about this. I’m quite sure that Thailand will have a legal casino, they will have in the near future,” Visanu told VOA.

A series of governments over the past decade set out plans to legalize casinos. Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra led an initial plan to legalize a casino in Pattaya before he was ousted by the military in a 2006 coup. Since 2014, the proposals have been given fresh momentum, with backing in 2016 from senior government and police officials. Current Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has expressed caution over the plans.

Visanu said initial planning has placed at least one major casino resort in the greater Bangkok area with another expected in the resort destination of Phuket Island in southern Thailand.

Oversight, transparency

Rattaphong Sornsuphap, from Rangsit University’s College of Social Innovation, said a priority for any government will be to ensure oversight and transparency in the management of any casino.

“First thing is the government or government agencies are able to have control over [the casino]. But the management needs to be at a professional level. A professional casino – being a professional I mean the system of management, transparency and accounting – everything,” Rattaphong said.

Research by Rangist University says up to 10 underground casinos had been operating in the greater Bangkok area prior to the military takeover in 2014 with annual gross income between $5 billion and $5.6 billion annually. Sungsidh Piriyarangsan, dean of Rangsit’s College of Social Innovation, has been quoted as saying tax revenues alone could reach $2.78 billion once casinos are legalized.

Rattaphong said that from the major casinos operating across the Greater Mekong region – with Malaysia and Singapore included, total revenues were estimated at almost $50 billion in 2015, up from $34.2 billion in 2010.

Rattaphong said at least 32 major casinos are operating along the border with Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

Big draw

The regional casinos are a regular draw for Thai gamblers, as the establishments even offer buses to pick up players from the capital, Bangkok, and transport them to the Cambodian border town of Poipet, just over two hours away.

In 2015, Thai analysts said senior representatives from U.S.-based Las Vegas Sands, operator of the Marina Bay Sands Casino in Singapore, held high-profile talks with members of the Thai government and offered to spend up to $6 billion on a 450-room entertainment and casino complex in central Bangkok.

Dhurakij Pundit University’s Visanu said past research has focused on three existing regional models that could be adopted for the Thai market.

These include the style of Malaysia’s integrated resort at Genting, of the Singapore model evidenced by the Marina Bay Sands Casino, or a style similar to casino developments in Macau, which has several entertainment and gaming venues.

A spokesperson for the Singapore-based Marina Bay Sands casino told VOA in email comments the casino operator was monitoring the situation in Thailand. Researchers say based on recent surveys, there is a growing trend among Thais backing the casino reform legislation.

A senior academic, who asked not to be named, said any official moves to legalize casinos will require the full support of the most senior members of the Thai government.

He said there was also some reticence among members of the Thai public over the plans and the need to ensure transparency as well as for income generated from the casinos to be used for social welfare benefits to win public backing.

Gaming industry analysts say Thailand, backed by strong international investor interest, could post revenues from casino and resort operations similar in size to Singapore, which currently generates about $4 billion in gross gaming revenue from its two integrated resorts – Marina Bay and Resorts Bay Sentosa.

Thailand’s booming tourism sector, with more than 30 million visitors annually, including some 10 million from China, is a target market for the casino and leisure industry.
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European regulators fined Google a record 2.42 billion euros ($2.72 billion) for abusing its dominance of the online search market in a case that could be just the opening salvo in Europe’s attempt to curb the company’s clout on that continent.

The decision announced Tuesday by the European Commission punished Google for unfairly favoring its own online shopping recommendations in its search results. The commission is also conducting at least two other probes into the company’s business practices that could force Google to make even more changes in the way it bundles services on mobile devices and sells digital advertising.

Even so, Europe’s crackdown is unlikely to affect Google’s products in the U.S. or elsewhere. But it could provide an opportunity to contrast how consumers fare when the company operates under constraints compared with an unfettered Google.

The fine immediately triggered debate about whether European regulators were taking prudent steps to preserve competition or overstepping their bounds to save companies being shunned by consumers who have overwhelmingly embraced an alternative.

Margrethe Vestager, Europe’s top antitrust regulator, said her agency’s nearly seven-year investigation left no doubt something had to be done to rein in Google.

“What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation,” Vestager told reporters Tuesday.

The fine was the highest ever imposed in Europe for anti-competitive behavior, exceeding a 1.06 billion euros penalty on Silicon Valley chip maker Intel in 2009.

The penalty itself is unlikely to leave a dent in Google’s finances. Parent company Alphabet Inc. has more than $92 billion (82 billion euros) in cash, including nearly $56 billion (50 billion euros) in accounts outside of the U.S.

The findings in Europe contrasted sharply with those reached by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in a similar investigation of Google completed in 2013. The FTC absolved Google of any serious wrongdoing after concluding that its search recommendations did not undermine competition or hurt consumers.

Leading up to that unanimous decision, though, some of the FTC’s staff sent a memo to the agency’s commissioners recommending legal action because Google’s “conduct has resulted – and will result – in real harm to consumers and to innovation in the online search and advertising markets,” according to a memo inadvertently released to The Wall Street Journal two years ago.

Google’s misbehavior in Europe boiled down to its practice of highlighting its own online shopping service above those of its rivals. Merchants pay Google for the right to show summaries of their products in small boxes displayed near the top of search results when someone seems to be interested in a purchase.

Meanwhile, Google lists search results of its biggest rivals in online shopping on page 4 – and smaller rivals even lower, based on the calculations of European regulators. That’s a huge advantage for Google when 90 percent of user clicks are on the first page.

Google says consumers like its shopping thumbnails because they are concise and convenient.

The commission’s decision “underestimates the value of those kinds of fast and easy connections,” Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel, wrote in a blog post.

Europe’s investigation did not present any concrete evidence that consumers had been financially damaged by Google’s online shopping tactics, said Ibanez Colomo, a law professor at the London School of Economics.

“The only harm being alleged here is that competing services have suffered a decrease in traffic coming from Google,” Colomo said on a call organized by the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a tech lobbying group.

Alphabet is mulling an appeal of Tuesday’s penalty, but even if that is filed, the Mountain View, California, company will still only have 90 days to comply with an order to stop favoring its own links to online shopping. If it does not, Alphabet faces more fines of up to 5 percent of its average daily revenue worldwide. That would translate into roughly $14 million (12 million euros), based on Alphabet’s revenue during the first three months of the year.

Rather than comply, Google could shut down its shopping service in Europe.

If that happens, “it will mean consumers in Europe are going to be worse off than consumers in the rest of the world,” predicted David Balto, a consumer advocate and antitrust expert who formerly served as the FTC’s policy director. “Consumers rarely benefit when bureaucrats put their thumbs on the economic scales to tip them one way or the other.”

Google’s critics applauded the EU for standing up to the company after the FTC backed down.

“Some may object to the EU moving so aggressively against U.S.-based companies, but these authorities are at least trying to deal with some of the new competitive challenges facing our economy,” said the News Media Alliance, a group representing U.S. newspapers whose revenue has plunged as more advertising flowed to Google during the past decade.

Other antitrust experts believe the fine levied on Google means European regulators are more likely to rein in other U.S. technology companies such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Netflix as they win over more European consumers at the expense of homegrown companies.

“We already have been in an information trade war,” said Larry Downs, who studies antitrust issues as project director at Georgetown University’s Center for Business and Public Policy. “But I think it just went from being a cold war to a hot war with Europe.”
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President Donald Trump on Tuesday hailed an energy revolution marked by surging U.S. exports of oil and natural gas.

Trump cited a series of steps the administration has taken to boost energy production and remove government regulations that he argues prevent the United States from achieving “energy dominance” in the global market.

“Together, we are going to start a new energy revolution — one that celebrates American production on American soil,” Trump said in a statement, adding that the U.S. is on the brink of becoming a net exporter of oil, gas and other energy resources.

The self-proclaimed “energy week” follows similar policy-themed weeks on infrastructure and jobs.

At the White House, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said the administration is confident officials can “pave the path toward U.S. energy dominance” by exporting oil, gas and coal to markets around the world, and promoting nuclear energy and even renewables such as wind and solar power.

“One of the things we want to do at [the Department of Energy] is to make nuclear energy cool again,” Perry said.

The focus on energy began at a meeting between Trump and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with U.S. natural gas exports part of the discussion. Trump is expected to talk energy Wednesday with governors and tribal leaders, and he will deliver a speech Thursday at the Energy Department.

Arctic, Atlantic drilling

Trump signed an executive order in April to expand oil drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, reversing restrictions imposed by his predecessor, Barack Obama. Trump has also pushed to revive U.S. coal production after years of decline. Coal mining rose by 19 percent in the first five months of the year as the price of natural gas edged up, according to Energy Department data.

U.S. oil and gas production have boomed in recent years, primarily because of improved drilling techniques such as fracking that have opened up production in areas previously out of reach of drillers.

A report released in January by the Energy Information Administration said the country is on track to become a net energy exporter by 2026, although the White House said Tuesday that net exports could top imports as soon as 2020.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke also focused on energy as he addressed the Western Governors’ Association in his hometown of Whitefish, Montana.

Zinke said increased offshore drilling could provide more than enough revenue to offset an $11.5 billion maintenance backlog in national parks.

“There’s a consequence when you put 94 percent of our offshore off limits. There’s a consequence of not harvesting trees. There’s a consequence of not using some of our public lands for creation of wealth and jobs,” he said.

Despite Trump’s withdrawal from the global Paris climate accord, Perry said the U.S. remains committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. He called nuclear power a key element to fight climate change.
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A boycott imposed by four Arab nations that accuse Qatar of supporting terrorism is squeezing the tourism sector, and Doha’s hotels, which would normally be full in the Eid al-Fitr holiday, have seen steep falls in their occupancy rates.

A Reuters survey of five major hotels found average occupancy was around 57 percent at the start of the Eid festival on Sunday, which marks the end of the Ramadan fasting month, when friends and families eat and pray together and take holidays.

“We’re usually packed with Saudis and Bahrainis, but not this year,” a staff member at a five-star hotel said.

But Qatar’s official news agency QNA cited officials and managers in the hotel sector reporting hotel occupancy over the holiday period stood at more than 95 percent and denied reports of lower rates.

“They pointed to high tourist flows from the Sultanate of Oman and the State of Kuwait and a significant increase in demand from domestic tourism,” QNA said.

Free night at some hotels

QNA said an offer by some hotels to offer guests staying two nights at hotels a third night free had helped win high occupancy and that the sector has shown its ability to “diversify away from traditional markets.”

Aviation analyst Will Horton estimated Hamad International Airport, one of the Middle East’s busiest, would handle 76 percent as many flights in early July compared with the same period last year, a loss of about 27,000 passengers a day.

The airport said in a statement Tuesday that it had experienced a “very busy” Eid period with 580,000 passengers passing through between June 19 and June 25. It did not give comparative figures for last year’s Eid.

Visitors from the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council usually account for almost half of all visitors to Qatar. So a decision by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt to cut diplomatic and transport ties on June 5 hit traffic hard.

“Doha in early July, assuming the restrictions remain, will have less capacity than a year ago — a confronting figure for a region where every month sets year-on-year records,” said Horton, senior analyst at Australia’s CAPA Centre for Aviation.

There is no breakthrough in sight for the crisis, in which the four Arab nations issued an ultimatum to Doha to close Al Jazeera television, curb ties with Iran, shut a Turkish base and pay reparations. A defiant Doha has denied accusations of supporting terrorism and says the demands are unrealistic.

Airport losses

Hundreds of weekly flights to and from Qatar have already been canceled because of the dispute. Hamad airport stands to lose fees paid by airlines and passengers, as well as terminal revenue from duty free shops and restaurants.

Air links suspended by the four Arab states represented around 25 percent of flights by state-owned Qatar Airways, one of the region’s big three carriers.

Qatar Airways, whose hub is Hamad airport, said on Tuesday that 510,949 of its passengers had traveled through the airport in the past seven days. It did not give comparative figures.

Qatar Airways Chief Executive Akbar al-Baker had said on June 14 the majority of its operations had not been affected by restrictions imposed by the four Arab states.

Elsewhere in the tourist sector, hotels, restaurants and other facilities have had to find new sources of services and goods — in some cases, at higher cost — because of the boycott, said Rashid Aboobacker, senior director at TRI Consulting in Dubai.

“A substantial drop in visitor arrivals is likely to force hotel and real estate developers to re-evaluate their strategies and priorities, potentially causing delays to some of the ongoing [tourism] projects,” he said.

Qatar’s 2022 FIFA World Cup organizing committee has said sanctions have not affected preparations for the tournament, and that alternative sources for construction materials have been secured.

Qatar has said 46,000 rooms will be available to host fans by the time of the World Cup. In March, it had 119 hotels with 23,347 rooms, according to the tourism authority.

Developing business and leisure tourism is part of Qatar’s drive to develop its economy away from reliance on oil and gas revenue.

Doha aims to raise the tourism sector’s contribution to GDP to 5.2 percent by 2030 from around 4.1 percent now, while raising the number of people employed by nearly 70 percent to 127,900.
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President Donald Trump on Thursday will lay out his plan for reducing regulations to boost already-abundant U.S. production of oil, natural gas and coal and export it around the world, creating American jobs and helping allies.

Trump will deliver an address on his administration’s new mantra of “energy dominance” at the Energy Department, officials told reporters. They declined to give details on how he would tweak existing regulations that have not stopped a surge in exports.

“We’ve gone from the age of scarcity now to the age of abundance when it comes to American energy,” Mike Catanzaro, a White House energy policy aide, told reporters.

“We want to use those abundant resources for good here at home and for good abroad as well,” Catanzaro said.

Trump’s speech comes a week before he meets in Warsaw with leaders of a dozen central and eastern European nations who are eager to see more U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) in their markets as an alternative to Russian gas.

Trump is stopping at the summit on his way to the G20 in Hamburg, Germany, where he is expected to meet face-to-face for the first time in his presidency with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Shipments of LNG will play a big part in the “energy dominance” strategy, Energy Secretary Rick Perry told reporters, but so will exports of coal and U.S. technology that helps reduce emissions from coal-fired plants, he said.

Perry said he discussed the potential for U.S. coal exports to Ukraine with President Petro Poroshenko during his visit to Washington last week.

The Trump administration believes in an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy, Perry said – borrowing the energy catch-phrase of the Obama administration.

U.S. domestic energy prices have plunged in recent years because of the natural gas boom, crowding out competing sources of power, including coal and nuclear. Dozens of nuclear power reactors are in danger of shutting down over the next several years as a result.

The Trump administration wants to make sure the United States remains “technologically and economically engaged” in the nuclear industry, Perry said. “If we do not, then China and Russia will fill that void,” he said.

But he said the administration would not be “wildly supportive” of subsidizing any sectors of the energy industry.

Perry said energy supports in the tax code would be examined as the administration and Congress look at tax reform later this year.

“I think we’ll have a good healthy conversation about the energy sector and tax incentives, subsidies – all of that needs to be on the table and we need to have a conversation about it,” Perry said.
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New York City real estate companies’ attempts to rename a Harlem neighborhood “SoHa” have enraged longtime residents of the historically black enclave, who say the move erases the community’s rich cultural history.

The neighborhood served as home and inspiration to generations of leading African-Americans, including activists W.E.B. Du Bois and Malcolm X, who dubbed it “Seventh Heaven.” Artists such as poet Langston Hughes and singers Harry Belafonte and Ella Fitzgerald also lived there.

The “SoHa” name, echoing the high-priced, largely white Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo in lower Manhattan, has begun appearing in real estate listings for apartments located between 110th Street and 125th Street, and Realtor Keller Williams boasts a “SoHa Team” of agents on its website.

Keller Williams did not respond to a request for comment.

Harlem’s U.S. Congressman Adriano Espaillat vowed to introduce a House resolution to protect Harlem from being renamed.

“#WeRHarlem! And we refuse to be called by any other name! #NY13 #HarlemStrong,” @RepEspaillat wrote on Twitter on Monday.

The tweet accompanied a photograph of the famed Apollo Theater, where Fitzgerald made her singing debut at age 17 on Amateur Night in 1934.

Espaillat said the congressional resolution he plans to introduce this week “supports imposing limitations on the ability to change the name of a neighborhood based on economic gain.”

“I along with leaders and constituents of this community stand united to vigorously oppose the renaming Harlem in yet another sanctioned gentrification,” he said in an email. “This is an incredibly insulting attempt to disown Harlem’s longtime residents, legacy, and culture.”

Jamie McShane, a spokesman for the Real Estate Board of New York, an industry association, said the group supports existing state regulations, which prohibit real estate brokers from using “a name to describe an area that would be misleading to the public.”

Harlem is not the only historically black U.S. neighborhood to have its image challenged by eager real estate agents.

Further north, parts of the South Bronx have been christened the “Piano District,” a reference to its former instrument manufacturing base.

In Washington, D.C., real estate firms have recast the Shaw neighborhood around historically black Howard University as North End of Shaw.

Both sparked outrage among longtime residents, particularly after developers who pushed the Piano District name change threw a “Bronx is Burning” themed Halloween party in 2015 that focused on the neighborhood’s 1970’s decay, complete with a bullet-riddled car sculpture.
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Making agriculture profitable and “cool” for young people in Africa is key to lifting millions out of poverty and stemming migration to Europe, said the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB).

Akinwumi Adesina was named the winner of this year’s World Food Prize on Monday for his decades-long work to boost food production in his native Nigeria, increase access to credit for small farmers across Africa and transform the continent’s agriculture.

Kenneth Quinn, president of the Des Moines, Iowa-based World Food Prize Foundation, said the $250,000 award reflected Adesina’s “breakthrough achievements” as Nigeria’s minister of agriculture and his critical role in the development of the nonprofit Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

Adesina, 57, told Reuters he was humbled by the award but felt his work to ensure Africa could feed itself was “uncompleted business.”

Almost 30 percent of the 795 million people in the world who do not have enough to eat are in Africa, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

“When I look at Africa today, I see that many rural areas unfortunately have become zones of economic misery,” Adesina said in a phone interview ahead of the award’s announcement.

No sector has greater potential to revive those areas than agriculture, but investments are needed to make it attractive for young people, many of whom risk their lives migrating in search of better opportunities in Europe, Adesina said.

“We must make agriculture cool for young people,” he said. “The key is to make agriculture a business. Agriculture is not a way of life, is not a development activity, it’s a business.”

Africa has 65 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land but imports food for $35 billion every year, a bill that is expected to swell to $110 billion by 2025, he said.

“It makes no sense. That is food Africa should be producing, processing, selling and exporting,” he said. “Africa in the future should not only feed itself, but it must contribute to feeding the world.”

Toward this end, agriculture must become more industrialized, with farmers gaining better access to seeds, fertilizer, credit, power and infrastructure, he said.

Farmers should be supported to transform from producers of raw materials, such as cocoa and cotton, to manufacturers of finished goods such as chocolate and garments, which have less volatile prices, Adesina said.

To accelerate growth, the AfDB aimed to invest $12 billion in the energy sector, hoping to leverage another $50 billion from the private sector, he said.

Last year, AfDB had invested $800 million to support young agro-entrepreneurs in eight countries and planned to extend the scheme to 30 nations, he added.

Adesina called on governments and institutional investors, such as pension and insurance funds, to “see the gold” in African agriculture and invest in it to unlock its potential. He said he was convinced the future billionaires of Africa would come from agriculture.

“I don’t believe that the future of African youth lies at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea,” he said. “The future of African young people lies in a more prosperous and inclusive Africa, and there is no other sector that has greater power to create growth than the agricultural sector.”

Adesina was named winner of the World Food Prize, regarded as the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for agriculture, in a ceremony on Monday at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington.
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Голова правління «Приватбанку» Олександр Шлапак подав заяву про відставку.

Як повідомляє прес-служба фінансової установи, Шлапак «виконав у повній мірі поставлені завдання щодо стабілізації ситуації в банку і найближчим часом планує завершити антикризову каденцію на своїй посаді».

При цьому в Наглядовій раді банку повідомляють, що Шлапак продовжує керувати банком, водночас відповідна його заява вже подана Наглядовій раді банку і може бути розглянута наприкінці липня.

У грудні минулого року уряд ухвалив рішення про націоналізацію «Приватбанку», екс-міністра фінансів Олександра Шлапака призначили головою правління фінансової установи. 

 
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Embattled Japanese auto parts manufacturer Takata said Monday it has filed for bankruptcy protection.

Takata also announced that rival Key Safety Systems is purchasing Takata for $1.5 billion. 

Takata has been overwhelmed with the costs of lawsuits and recalls related to defective airbags linked to the deaths of 16 people and scores of injuries worldwide.

The defective airbags led to a global recall of tens of millions of automobiles. The chemicals that power the airbags were found to deteriorate spontaneously with prolonged exposure to high humidity, causing the airbags to deploy far more forcefully than normal and sending metal and plastic shrapnel into drivers and passengers.

Takata has already agreed to pay a billion-dollar fine to settle with U.S. safety regulators.  Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has said that Takata engaged in a pattern of “delay, misdirection and refusal to acknowledge the truth.”

Jason Luo, president  and CEO of Key Safety Systems, said, “Although Takata has been impacted by the global airbag recall, the underlying strength of its skilled employee base, geographic reach, and exceptional steering wheels, seat belts and other safety products have not diminished.” 

The Tokyo Stock Exchange suspended trading of Takata shares Monday and said it would delist Takata stock Tuesday.
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