BITMANU CRYPTOCURRENCY MINERS ON PROMOTIONAL OFFER

KUALA LUMPUR, June 12 (Bernama) -- Bitmanu has announced a 3 Plus 1 promotional offer for its suite of ASIC miners until July 10, offering one mining rig absolutely free of charge to all purchasers purchasing three units of the same kind.

The company’s BM 1, BM 2 and BM Pro miners have already made a strong impact on the market with their unmatched hash-rates.

As a result of these hash rates, Bitmanu miners have been tipped by many as the most powerful mining hardware ever built, and has been complemented by the fact that its products are not power-hungry monsters.

In a statement, Bitmanu said these energy-efficient machines have helped most users recover their investment entirely in no more than a month.

In order to make the benefits of crypto mining available to all, Bitmanu has taken several important measures such as, their miners are simple plug-and-play devices that can start mining as soon as they are connected to a power socket.

Moreover, the system requirements of these products are nominal, making them ideally suited for small time mining enthusiasts.

-- BERNAMA

FREEDOMPAY IS PREFERRED PAYMENTS PARTNER WITH TOAST PARTNERSHIP

KUALA LUMPUR, June 13 (Bernama) -- FreedomPay, the world’s leading independent commerce platform and Toast, the all-in-one digital platform built for the entire restaurant community, signed a partnership agreement making FreedomPay, Toast’s preferred payments gateway partner for select enterprise brands.

Toast will be able to offer its cloud-based digital platform for restaurants to leading enterprise merchants in the United States and Canada who are on the award-winning FreedomPay Commerce Platform.

In a statement, FreedomPay Senior Vice President, Sales & Digital Development, Nate Ware said: “This exciting collaboration between FreedomPay and Toast delivers advanced capabilities to large merchants.

“We are quite simply ‘unleashing the power of pay’ to thousands more businesses to help support Toast’s growth across enterprise level merchant solutions.”

Meanwhile, Toast Senior Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise, Kelly Esten said the company continued to deliver the industry’s trusted digital platform to help restaurants of all sizes and types, drive profitability, create the streamlined dining experiences guests expect, and make managing food service operations across properties easier than ever.

FreedomPay is one of the world’s fastest growing fintechs, innovating and transforming commerce to Next Level payment solutions and is aggressively expanding in new markets including the Middle East, South America, Africa and Asia Pacific.

FreedomPay and Toast will be exhibiting together at HITEC in Toronto, from June 26-29.

-- BERNAMA

YAYASAN PETRONAS RECEIVES REGIONAL RECOGNITION FOR TREE-PLANTING INITIATIVE

KUALA LUMPUR, June 12 (Bernama) -- Yayasan PETRONAS has earned an ASEAN Green Initiative (AGI) recognition for Large-Scale Tree Planting Initiatives following its efforts to plant 57,545 trees in Malaysia under the foundation’s tree-planting activities in support of PETRONAS’ Walk4Trees Programme.

Over a two-year period, Yayasan PETRONAS and its project implementation partner Global Environment Centre (GEC) had planted 62 species of trees with the support of 24 community groups at 14 project sites across 11 states in Malaysia.

The recognition was announced at a special awards ceremony in Jakarta, Indonesia recently in conjunction with the Regional Forum on Ecosystem Restoration organised by the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity, who is also the AGI organiser. On hand to receive the award were Yayasan PETRONAS Chief Executive Officer, Shariah Nelly Francis and GEC Director, Faizal Parish.

Shariah Nelly said, "The recognition by AGI, alongside the quality of awardees shared with Yayasan PETRONAS and our partner GEC is a testament to the strength of this growing movement of grassroots initiatives in restoring the region’s rich biodiversity and elevate the livelihood of the communities we work with. The recognition also demonstrates an enduring commitment and passion to the work that is both humbling and inspiring to see. We would be very happy to share our stories and lessons learnt, and in turn we also hope to learn from other organisations to further our efforts.

The AGI, a biennial programme that started in 2021, aims to ramp up restoration efforts via a tree-planting movement in the region. It targets to plant at least 10 million trees in 10 ASEAN Member states over a period of 10 years. Organisations and programmes nominated for the inaugural AGI recognition this year were evaluated on the merit of the project’s ecological soundness, socio-economic impact, sustainability, and compliance with governance and institutional mechanisms.

Faizal congratulated Yayasan PETRONAS on the award and also took the opportunity to recognise the efforts of the local communities and government agencies that were key to driving the success of the programme.

“The participation of local community groups at all the project sites was critical to the success of the initiative. All the trees were grown in community nurseries and later planted and maintained by community members. This enabled the project to be completed successfully even during the COVID-19 pandemic when movement was restricted. The bulk of the funds for the initiative were passed to the local community, providing important supplementary income during the pandemic and creating new income generating options for the future,” Faizal added.

To date, through the cohesive efforts alongside GEC, Yayasan PETRONAS has successfully planted 71,538 trees with a 78.1% survival rate.

YAYASAN PETRONAS RECEIVES REGIONAL RECOGNITION FOR TREE-PLANTING INITIATIVE

EB5 Capital Reveals Closure Of Hutchinson Island (JF38) Project

KUALA LUMPUR, June 9 (Bernama) -- EB5 Capital has announced the closing of its US$40 million preferred equity investment in Daniel Corporation’s Hutchinson Island (JF38) apartment project, located in Savannah, Georgia. (US$1=RM4.60)

The project is near the Convention Center and The Westin Harbor Golf Resort and will consist of six residential buildings that are four stories in height with 462 parking spaces.

According to a statement, Hutchinson Island (JF38) is scheduled to break ground imminently, and the first units are expected to be delivered in early 2025.

“Savannah has seen significant job growth and capital investment in recent years, following the increased economic activity at the Port of Savannah.

“Additionally, Savannah has demonstrated strong multifamily market fundamentals, posting positive net absorption in 17 of the past 20 quarters along with significant annual rent growth,” said EB5 Capital Senior Vice President of Investments, Jonathan Mullen.

Meanwhile, Daniel Corporation’s Chief Operating Officer, Carter Bryars said: “The preferred equity investment from EB5 Capital enabled us to significantly reduce the amount of common equity required and create a capital stack accretive to Daniel Corporation and our partners.”

This is EB5 Capital’s first partnership with Daniel Corporation, a reputable developer founded in 1964 and based in Birmingham, Alabama.

Providing preferred equity investments for ground-up development across the United States, EB5 Capital has successfully raised approximately one billion dollars since inception and continues to seek investments in multifamily assets with sponsors that have a proven track record of success.

-- BERNAMA

Mattermost Enhances Operational Workflows Via “Customer-controlled AI Architecture”

KUALA LUMPUR, June 8 (Bernama) -- Mattermost Inc, announced a new “Customer-Controlled AI Architecture” enabling defence, government and technology enterprises to apply generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to enhancing or replacing operational workflows while meeting stringent data control requirements and avoiding lock-in to vendor-specific platforms.

“If you are part of an organisation that has clear competitors or adversaries, then you are in a race right now to unlock the power of AI for gaining speed and decision advantage.

“Our release serves organisations competing in that race who also need to meet strict security and sovereignty requirements,” said Mattermost Chief Executive Officer, Ian Tien in a statement.

The open source, self-managed solution provides feature-rich, chat-based collaboration across web, desktop and mobile experiences to engage with colleagues as well as AI bots powered by an interchangeable set of open source AI platforms, known as large language models (LLMs).

The system can be fully controlled by a customer within their private network or data centre, and can even be deployed to air-gapped networks disconnected from the internet.

“While we are starting with an open source, private cloud framework, over time we intend to add integration with proprietary, public cloud based AI models, because we believe enterprises are best served with a range of solutions to meet different needs,” added Tien.

Benefits of Mattermost’s customer-controlled AI platform include fully-featured chat-based collaboration; conversational AI bots that can be added to channels and engaged like human users; and scalable AI model framework that can scale up to deploy on a private cloud or data centre.

Mattermost provides secure collaboration for technical and operational teams that need to meet nation-state-level security and trust requirements.

-- BERNAMA

YAYASAN PETRONAS SEES RECORD ENROLMENT FOR PROGRAM DUTA GURU

456 secondary school teachers of Cohort 4 of the Program Duta Guru will begin their two-year journey by attending a comprehensive 24-month programme focused on integrated STEM and Engineering Design Process (EDP).

KUALA LUMPUR, June 8 (Bernama) -- Yayasan PETRONAS recorded its highest enrolment rate in its upskilling programme, Program Duta Guru (PDG) for secondary school teachers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subjects.
The programme aimed at enhancing teachers' skills and knowledge in STEM saw approximately 456 teachers in PDG’s national induction (Kitaran Pembelajaran 1.2) recently. These teachers form the 4th Cohort of the 10-year programme carried out in partnership with the Ministry of Education (MOE).

"We are excited to witness such an extraordinary response to PDG," said Shariah Nelly Francis, CEO of Yayasan PETRONAS.

"The enthusiasm and commitment shown by educators demonstrate their eagerness to enhance their teaching skills and provide their students with an engaging and transformative learning experience. We are proud to support them as they began their journey in becoming future Duta Guru,” she added.

With the critical need in increasing STEM enrolment among students in the nation, Yayasan PETRONAS recognised the importance in equipping teachers with the necessary tools and expertise to inspire the next generation of innovators and problem solvers who will bring solutions to the various crises confronting nations.

Over 400 teachers will begin their two-year journey by attending a comprehensive 24-month programme focused on integrated STEM and Engineering Design Process (EDP), that includes training, coaching, and peer-learning elements. PDG equips teachers with innovative teaching strategies that aims to enhance higher order thinking skills (HOTS) among their students.

To date, there are 730 participants enrolled in PDG across 141 districts and 253 Duta Guru (graduated teachers). By 2030, PDG aims to upskill 4,500 teachers nationwide in higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) to serve as role models in the delivery of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects to students.

Issued by:
Yayasan PETRONAS

Photo Link:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18H2VpTZ8nYV81cCxLA16clWsJwiRkk1S?usp=share_link

Photo Captions:

Photo 1: Shariah Nelly Francis, CEO of Yayasan PETRONAS (second from center) speaking with participants of Program Duta Guru, the foundation’s flagship education programme which aims to contribute towards a Malaysia that has sufficient and competent STEM educated students.

Photo 2: 456 secondary school teachers of Cohort 4 of the Program Duta Guru will begin their two-year journey by attending a comprehensive 24-month programme focused on integrated STEM and Engineering Design Process (EDP).

SOURCE: Yayasan PETRONAS

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Yayasan PETRONAS
Name: Low Jia Yin
Email: low.jiayin@petronas.com.my

--BERNAMA

ECI HIRES JEFF SCHMIDT AS CEO TO LEAD NEXT PHASE OF GROWTH

KUALA LUMPUR, June 7 (Bernama) -- ECI, the leader in managed services and cybersecurity for the global financial services industry, has appointed Jeff Schmidt as president and chief executive officer (CEO).

According to a statement, outgoing CEO of ECI, David Andrade will consult with Schmidt and the company during a transition period.

“I personally thank David for nearly two decades of exemplary service, including the past three years as CEO. David's contributions have helped build ECI into the powerful firm it is today and underpin the strong relationships and trust we enjoy with our clients and partners,” said Executive Chairman of ECI's Board of Directors, John Cahaly.

Schmidt is a leader in managed services, technology, and cybersecurity with a long track record of growing sales, increasing profits, managing complex acquisitions and integrations, building world-class teams, and boosting customer service and retention.

He joins ECI as the firm embarks on a new stage of growth to further secure its dominant role in the sector.

Meanwhile, Schmidt said: “ECI has more than two decades of experience solving its customers’ toughest challenges and helping them adopt new technology in an ever-changing environment.

“We will continue to answer the call from our customers and uphold our mission to be the most transformative business partner you will ever engage, as we grow our product offerings and expand our services into adjacent sectors.”

Most recently, Schmidt was the founding CEO of Avertium, a leading provider of cybersecurity services, where he tripled revenues over five years. Earlier, he held management positions of increasing responsibility at SQS, All Covered, and British Telecom.

-- BERNAMA