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Panama wrests control of ports from HK group

than 13 million exchanges. Each campaign concentrated heavily on coding, agentic reasoning, and tool use – areas where Claude is considered a leader. To circumvent Anthropic’s ban on commercial access from China, the labs allegedly routed traffic through proxy services that managed the vast networks of fraudulent accounts. Anthropic called for coordinated industry and government responses to address what it said no single company could tackle alone. – AFP BlackRock bets on corporate bonds over ‘volatile’ sovereigns LONDON: Investment giant BlackRock favours corporate debt due to the higher yields on offer as inflation subsides, it said yesterday, and warned that government bond markets are likely to be more volatile as countries spend big on defence and infrastructure. BlackRock, which has US$14 trillion under management, said in an outlook report that falling inflation means the high yields available on corporate bonds are becoming more attractive in real terms. This outweighed concerns that the additional returns over government bonds – so-called credit spreads – are around multi-decade lows, it said. “The certainty that you used to get from government bonds is no longer quite as certain,” James Turner, head of global fixed income EMEA at BlackRock, said in an interview with Reuters on Monday ahead of the report’s release. “At the same time as corporate fundamentals have generally been improving, you’ve generally seen government deficits on an increasing trend. Government bonds have actually been more volatile and less certain.” BlackRock said companies had benefited from continued economic growth in the US and Europe and had been able to cut their debt levels. Meanwhile, it said, sovereign bond markets face challenges as governments continue to spend heavily, particularly on defence. It cited France as facing pressures from high public debt and political uncertainty, and Britain as struggling with an uncertain growth outlook. British long-dated bond yields in September hit their highest since 1998, while France’s rose to a 17-year high in December. Yields move inversely to prices. “There’s still a place for having government bonds in there,”Turner said. “But we would prefer to overweight the credit part.” Turner said he thought the latest uncertainty around US President Donald Trump’s tariffs was unlikely to materially change BlackRock’s thesis, and cited how well economies and companies coped with trade policy uncertainty in 2025. “It’s about looking through that noise,” he said, adding investors should pay close attention to individual companies’ resilience as AI threatens to disrupt some areas of the economy. – Reuters

PANAMA Panamanian authorities have taken control of two ports on the Panama Canal from CK Hutchison after the Hong Kong-based conglomerate’s concession was annulled amid a row between the United States and China. CK Hutchison objected yesterday to the takeover, which it called “unlawful” and said raises “serious risks to the operations, health and safety” at terminals. In January, the country’s Supreme Court declared as “unconstitutional” the contract which had allowed Hutchison’s subsidiary Panama Ports Company (PPC) to manage the ports of Balboa on the Pacific and Cristobal on the Atlantic since 1997. “The Panama Maritime Authority has taken possession of its ports and guarantees the continuity of operations,” an official said on Monday after the Panamanian Supreme Court annulled o CK Hutchison calls takeover ‘unlawful,’ Hong Kong govt lodges ‘stern protest’ CITY:

operated by two other companies before contracts are awarded under a new international tender. PPC denounced the move as an “illegal takeover without transparency or coordination” and said Panama’s actions were “confiscatory”. In its statement yesterday, CK Hutchison said: “None of the actions by the Panama State were advised to or co-ordinated with PPC.” It will continue to consult with legal advisers regarding the ruling and “all available recourse including ... legal proceedings against the Republic of Panama and its agents and third parties colluding with them”, CK Hutchison added. Hong Kong’s government lodged a “stern protest” yesterday, saying in a statement that the “heavy-handed action” had “seriously infringed upon the lawful rights and interests of Hong Kong enterprises”. China’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office had previously warned that Panama would pay a “heavy price, both politically and economically” for stripping Hutchison of its tender. Panama said APM Terminals, a subsidiary of the Danish Maersk group, will operate the port of Balboa, and Terminal Investment Limited, owned by the logistics giant MSC, will operate the port of

Hutchison’s contracts to operate the ports. The court ruling was the latest legal move to ripple through the interoceanic waterway, which handles about 40% of US container traffic and 5% of world trade. The Central American country has been swept up in broader tensions between Washington and Beijing, with US President Donald Trump claiming, without providing evidence, last year that China effectively runs the canal. Panama has always denied Chinese control over the 80km waterway, which is used mainly by the United States and China. Hutchison had asked the Panamanian government to enter into negotiations to allow it to continue operating the two terminals – to no avail. Publication of the court ruling in the official gazette on Monday effectively ended the legal process. “This does not imply the expropriation of those assets, but rather their use to guarantee the operation of the ports until their real value is determined for the corresponding actions,” said Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino. Ports director Max Florez said an 18-month transition period now begins, with the ports being

Cristobal. Labour Minister Jackeline Munoz assured there would be “no layoffs” at the two terminals, which employ around 1,200 people. Following the court’s January ruling, the Panama Maritime Authority had said a division of Maersk Group would temporarily take over operation of the facilities. Last week, Hutchison warned of possible legal action against Maersk and others over the annulment of its contract. The Hong Kong company has said it will challenge Panama’s decision before the International Chamber of Commerce. US ambassador to Panama Kevin Cabrera defended Panamanian authorities, saying they have the right “to have their judicial system make its own decisions” and that the Supreme Court ruling was “very good” for the people of Panama. The Panama Canal was built by the United States, which operated it for a century before ceding control to Panama in 1999. On his first day back in the White House last year, Trump threatened to seize the canal. He cooled his threats after Panamanian authorities decided that the concession ran counter to Panama’s interests. – AFP

The entrance of the Port of Balboa, managed by CK Hutchison, on the Panama Canal. – AFPPIC

US AI giants accuse China rivals of mass data theft SAN FRANCISCO: US artificial intelligence company Anthropic said on Monday it had uncovered campaigns by three Chinese AI firms to illicitly extract capabilities from its Claude chatbot, in what it described as industrial-scale intellectual property theft. Anthropic said DeepSeek, “These campaigns are growing in intensity and sophistication,” the company said in a statement. “The window to act is narrow.” Distillation is a common practice within AI development, often used by companies to create cheaper, smaller versions of their own models. US dominance in the sensitive sector. Anthropic said the firms achieved their ends through approximately 16 million exchanges with its Claude model and 24,000 fake accounts.

models built through illicit distillation are unlikely to retain safety guardrails designed to prevent misuse – such as restrictions on helping develop bioweapons or enabling cyberattacks. Anthropic’s archrival OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, made similar accusations to US lawmakers earlier this month, saying Chinese companies were using the technique amid“ongoing efforts to free ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” Anthropic said MiniMax ran the largest operation, generating more

These allowed the three labs to siphon off capabilities they had not independently developed, at a fraction of the cost – and in so doing circumvented export controls on powerful US technology intended to preserve American dominance in AI. The company argued the practice posed national security risks, saying

The practice grabbed headlines a year ago when the release of a low-cost generative AI model from DeepSeek performed at a similar level to ChatGPT and other top American chatbots, upending assumptions of

Moonshot AI, and MiniMax used a technique known as “distillation” – using outputs from a more powerful AI system to rapidly boost the performance of a less capable one.