SG Morning Highlights | Sembmarine consortium bags 6 billion euros in contracts for offshore renewables project

Advancers / Decliners is 89 to 42, with 162.89 million securities worth S$93.61 million changing hands.

Donald Trump has been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury after a probe into hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, two sources said on Thursday (Mar 30), becoming the first former US president to face criminal charges even as he makes another run for the White House.

The charges, arising from an investigation led by Democratic Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, could reshape the 2024 presidential race. Trump previously said he would continue campaigning for the Republican Party's nomination if charged with a crime.

The specific charges are not yet known and the indictment will likely be announced in the coming days, the New York Times reported. Trump will have to travel to Manhattan for fingerprinting and other processing at that point.

Singapore hotel revenues and occupancy rates picked up in February, reversing from the dip in the previous month, Singapore Tourism Board data showed on Thursday (Mar 30).

Overall hotel room revenue grew to S$354.5 million in February, more than three times the year-ago figure. On a monthly basis, it increased 10.4 per cent, from S$321.2 million in January.

Average room rate (ARR) was up 47.9 per cent from the same period a year earlier to S$277.62, and nudged up slightly from January's revised rate of S$274.79.

A letter signed by Elon Musk and hundreds of experts calling for a pause in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) is a "hot mess" of "AI hype" that even misrepresents an academic paper, critics say.

Billionaire Tesla boss Musk and other luminaries wrote that "AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity".

But Timnit Gebru, whose academic paper was cited to support that claim, wrote on Twitter on Thursday (Mar 30) that her article actually warns against making such inflated claims about AI.

The new units are expected to be issued on or around Apr 11, said its manager on Friday.

The issue price of S$1.649 represents a 1.5 per cent discount to MLT's adjusted volume-weighted average price of S$1.6739 per unit. A total of 121,285,000 new units will be issued to raise S$200 million in gross proceeds.

The FCA covers a period of five years with the option to extend another three years. It comprises three contracts to supply high voltage direct current (HDVC) electrical transmission systems for three mega offshore wind farm projects, for a combined capacity of 6 GW in the Netherlands, as part of TenneT's offshore grid acceleration programme.

Each of the contracts is valued at about two billion euros (S$2.9 billion), said Sembmarine on Thursday (Mar 30).