Turkey's STM targets Southeast Asian market with new ship design
The MRSS is designed to perform a wide array of missions including amphibious operations, maritime logistics, humanitarian assistance, and search and rescue. The vessel is also equipped to operate as a hospital ship – reflecting Turkey's emphasis on developing platforms with broad utility across both combat and non-combat missions.
The unveiling comes as STM deepens its involvement in the region. In 2023, the company began construction of three Ada-class corvettes for the Royal Malaysian Navy under the LMS Batch-2 program, with work taking place at Turkish shipyards.
'This is our first time showcasing the MRSS at LIMA,' STM General Manager Özgür Güleryüz said at the event. 'The platform is specifically designed to meet the operational requirements of the Royal Malaysian Navy. It offers versatile solutions for modern naval operations.'
The 153-meter-long vessel has a beam of 24 meters and displaces approximately 9,700 tons. It is engineered for extended missions, with an endurance of 30 days and a cruising range exceeding 8,000 nautical miles at 14 knots. It can reach speeds above 18 knots.
The MRSS can accommodate a core crew of 150 personnel along with up to 500 embarked troops. Its 800-square-meter tank deck allows for the transport of up to 14 main battle tanks and nine amphibious assault vehicles. The vessel can also operate two 15-ton helicopters from its flight deck and hangar, and deploy two 10-meter rigid-hulled inflatable boats (RHIBs) using A-type davits. It carries 630 tons of fuel and 215 tons of freshwater, ensuring logistical autonomy during long deployments.
Armaments include a 76mm main gun, four 12.7mm remote-controlled stabilized weapon stations, and two chaff and infrared decoy launchers.
The pitch aligns with Turkey's growing focus on Asian defense markets. In 2023, sales to Asian countries — excluding those in the Commonwealth of Independent States — accounted for 16% of Turkey's total defense and aerospace exports, valued at nearly $1 billion, according to government figures.
The Turkish navy dispatched the Ada-class corvette TCG Büyükada to the exhibition. The vessel departed Foça Naval Base on April 19 and is scheduled to remain on deployment through mid-July, visiting multiple regional ports en route.
According to a statement from the Turkish Ministry of National Defense, the mission aims to bolster defense ties with regional partners, enhance the Turkish Navy's international visibility, and promote the country's defense industry abroad.
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Chicago Tribune
2 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Tariffs threaten Asian beauty product boom in US
NEW YORK — When Amrita Bhasin, 24, learned that products from South Korea might be subject to a new tax when they entered the United States, she decided to stock up on the sheet masks from Korean brands like U-Need and MediHeal she uses a few times a week. 'I did a recent haul to stockpile,' she said. 'I bought 50 in bulk, which should last me a few months.' South Korea is one of the countries that hopes to secure a trade deal before the Aug. 1 date President Donald Trump set for enforcing nation-specific tariffs. A not-insignificant slice of the U.S. population has skin in the game when it comes to Seoul avoiding a 25% duty on its exports. Asian skin care has been a booming global business for a more than a decade, with consumers in Europe, North and South America, and increasingly the Middle East, snapping up creams, serums and balms from South Korea, Japan and China. In the United States and elsewhere, Korean cosmetics, or K-beauty for short, have dominated the trend. A craze for all-in-one 'BB creams' — a combination of moisturizer, foundation and sunscreen — morphed into a fascination with 10-step rituals and ingredients like snail mucin, heartleaf and rice water. Vehicles and electronics may be South Korea's top exports to the U.S. by value, but the country shipped more skin care and cosmetics to the U.S. than any other last year, according to data from market research company Euromonitor. France, with storied beauty brands like L'Oreal and Chanel, was second, Euromonitor said. Statistics compiled by the U.S. International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency, show the U.S. imported $1.7 billion worth of South Korean cosmetics in 2024, a 54% increase from a year earlier. 'Korean beauty products not only add a lot of variety and choice for Americans, they really embraced them because they were offering something different for American consumers,' Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said. Along with media offerings such as 'Parasite' and 'Squid Games,' and the popularity of K-pop bands like BTS, K-beauty has helped boost South Korea's profile globally, she said. 'It's all part and parcel really of the same thing,' Lovely said. 'And it can't be completely stopped by a 25% tariff, but it's hard to see how it won't influence how much is sold in the U.S. And I think what we're hearing from producers is that it also really decreases the number of products they want to offer in this market.' Senti Senti, a retailer that sells international beauty products at two New York boutiques and through an e-commerce site, saw a bit of 'panic buying' by customers when Trump first imposed punitive tariffs on goods from specific countries, manager Winnie Zhong said. The rush slowed down after the president paused the new duties for 90 days and hasn't picked up again, Zhong said, even with Trump saying on July 7 that a 25% tax on imports from Japan and South Korea would go into effect on Aug. 1. Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia subsequently reached agreements with the Trump administration that lowered the tariff rates their exported goods faced — in Japan's case, from 25% to 15% — still higher than the current baseline of 10% tariff. But South Korea has yet to clinch an agreement, despite having a free trade agreement since 2012 that allowed cosmetics and most other consumer goods to enter the U.S. tax-free. Since the first store owned by Senti Senti opened 16 years ago, beauty products from Japan and South Korea became more of a focus and now account for 90% of the stock. The business hasn't had to pass on any tariff-related costs to customers yet, but that won't be possible if the products are subject to a 25% import tax, Zhong said. 'I'm not really sure where the direction of K-beauty will go to with the tariffs in place, because one of the things with K-beauty or Asian beauty is that it's supposed to be accessible pricing,' she said. Devoted fans of Asian cosmetics will often buy direct from Asia and wait weeks for their packages to arrive because the products typically cost less than they do in American stores. Rather than stocking up on their favorite sunscreens, lip tints and toners, some shoppers are taking a pause due to the tariff uncertainty. Los Angeles resident Jen Chae, a content creator with over 1.2 million YouTube subscribers, has explored Korean and Japanese beauty products and became personally intrigued by Chinese beauty brands over the last year. When the tariffs were first announced, Chae temporarily paused ordering from sites such as a shopping platform owned by an e-commerce company based in Hong Kong. She did not know if she would have to pay customs duties on the products she bought or the ones brands sent to her as a creator. 'I wasn't sure if those would automatically charge the entire package with a blanket tariff cost, or if it was just on certain items,' Chae said. On its website, YesStyle says it will give customers store credit to reimburse them for import charges. At Ohlolly, an online store focused on Korean products, owners Sue Greene and Herra Namhie are taking a similar pause. They purchase direct from South Korea and from licensed wholesalers in the U.S., and store their inventory in a warehouse in Ontario, California. After years of no duties, a 25% import tax would create a 'huge increase in costs to us,' Namhie said. She and Greene made two recent orders to replenish their stock when the tariffs were at 10%. But they have put further restocks on hold 'because I don't think we can handle 25%,' Namhie said. They'd have to raise prices, and then shoppers might go elsewhere. The business owners and sisters are holding out on hope the U.S. and Korea settle on a lower tariff or carve out exceptions for smaller ticket items like beauty products. But they only have two to four months of inventory in their warehouse. They say that in a month they'll have to make a decision on what products to order, what to discontinue and what prices will have to increase. Rachel Weingarten, a former makeup artist who writes a daily beauty newsletter called 'Hello Gorgeous!,' said while she's devoted to K-beauty products like lip masks and toner pads, she doesn't think stockpiling is a sound practice. 'Maybe one or two products, but natural oils, vulnerable packaging and expiration dates mean that your products could go rancid before you can get to them,' she said. Weingarten said she'll still buy Korean products if prices go up, but that the beauty world is bigger than one country. 'I'd still indulge in my favorites, but am always looking for great products in general,' she said. Bhasin, in Menlo Park, California, plans to keep buying her face masks too, even if the price goes up, because she likes the quality of Korean masks. 'If prices will go up, I will not shift to U.S. products,' she said. 'For face masks, I feel there are not a ton of solid and reliable substitutes in the U.S.'
The Hill
2 hours ago
- The Hill
Tariffs threaten Asian beauty product boom in US
NEW YORK (AP) — When Amrita Bhasin, 24, learned that products from South Korea might be subject to a new tax when they entered the United States, she decided to stock up on the sheet masks from Korean brands like U-Need and MediHeal she uses a few times a week. 'I did a recent haul to stockpile,' she said. 'I bought 50 in bulk, which should last me a few months.' South Korea is one of the countries that hopes to secure a trade deal before the Aug. 1 date President Donald Trump set for enforcing nation-specific tariffs. A not-insignificant slice of the U.S. population has skin in the game when it comes to Seoul avoiding a 25% duty on its exports. Asian skin care has been a booming global business for a more than a decade, with consumers in Europe, North and South America, and increasingly the Middle East, snapping up creams, serums and balms from South Korea, Japan and China. In the United States and elsewhere, Korean cosmetics, or K-beauty for short, have dominated the trend. A craze for all-in-one 'BB creams' — a combination of moisturizer, foundation and sunscreen — morphed into a fascination with 10-step rituals and ingredients like snail mucin, heartleaf and rice water. Vehicles and electronics may be South Korea's top exports to the U.S. by value, but the country shipped more skin care and cosmetics to the U.S. than any other last year, according to data from market research company Euromonitor. France, with storied beauty brands like L'Oreal and Chanel, was second, Euromonitor said. Statistics compiled by the U.S. International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency, show the U.S. imported $1.7 billion worth of South Korean cosmetics in 2024, a 54% increase from a year earlier. 'Korean beauty products not only add a lot of variety and choice for Americans, they really embraced them because they were offering something different for American consumers,' Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said. Along with media offerings such as 'Parasite' and 'Squid Games,' and the popularity of K-pop bands like BTS, K-beauty has helped boost South Korea's profile globally, she said. 'It's all part and parcel really of the same thing,' Lovely said. 'And it can't be completely stopped by a 25% tariff, but it's hard to see how it won't influence how much is sold in the U.S. And I think what we're hearing from producers is that it also really decreases the number of products they want to offer in this market.' Senti Senti, a retailer that sells international beauty products at two New York boutiques and through an e-commerce site, saw a bit of 'panic buying' by customers when Trump first imposed punitive tariffs on goods from specific countries, manager Winnie Zhong said. The rush slowed down after the president paused the new duties for 90 days and hasn't picked up again, Zhong said, even with Trump saying on July 7 that a 25% tax on imports from Japan and South Korea would go into effect on Aug. 1. Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia subsequently reached agreements with the Trump administration that lowered the tariff rates their exported goods faced — in Japan's case, from 25% to 15% — still higher than the current baseline of 10% tariff. But South Korea has yet to clinch an agreement, despite having a free trade agreement since 2012 that allowed cosmetics and most other consumer goods to enter the U.S. tax-free. Since the first store owned by Senti Senti opened 16 years ago, beauty products from Japan and South Korea became more of a focus and now account for 90% of the stock. The business hasn't had to pass on any tariff-related costs to customers yet, but that won't be possible if the products are subject to a 25% import tax, Zhong said. 'I'm not really sure where the direction of K-beauty will go to with the tariffs in place, because one of the things with K-beauty or Asian beauty is that it's supposed to be accessible pricing,' she said. Devoted fans of Asian cosmetics will often buy direct from Asia and wait weeks for their packages to arrive because the products typically cost less than they do in American stores. Rather than stocking up on their favorite sunscreens, lip tints and toners, some shoppers are taking a pause due to the tariff uncertainty. Los Angeles resident Jen Chae, a content creator with over 1.2 million YouTube subscribers, has explored Korean and Japanese beauty products and became personally intrigued by Chinese beauty brands over the last year. When the tariffs were first announced, Chae temporarily paused ordering from sites such as a shopping platform owned by an e-commerce company based in Hong Kong. She did not know if she would have to pay customs duties on the products she bought or the ones brands sent to her as a creator. 'I wasn't sure if those would automatically charge the entire package with a blanket tariff cost, or if it was just on certain items,' Chae said. On its website, YesStyle says it will give customers store credit to reimburse them for import charges. At Ohlolly, an online store focused on Korean products, owners Sue Greene and Herra Namhie are taking a similar pause. They purchase direct from South Korea and from licensed wholesalers in the U.S., and store their inventory in a warehouse in Ontario, California. After years of no duties, a 25% import tax would create a 'huge increase in costs to us,' Namhie said. She and Greene made two recent orders to replenish their stock when the tariffs were at 10%. But they have put further restocks on hold 'because I don't think we can handle 25%,' Namhie said. They'd have to raise prices, and then shoppers might go elsewhere. The business owners and sisters are holding out on hope the U.S. and Korea settle on a lower tariff or carve out exceptions for smaller ticket items like beauty products. But they only have two to four months of inventory in their warehouse. They say that in a month they'll have to make a decision on what products to order, what to discontinue and what prices will have to increase. Rachel Weingarten, a former makeup artist who writes a daily beauty newsletter called 'Hello Gorgeous!,' said while she's devoted to K-beauty products like lip masks and toner pads, she doesn't think stockpiling is a sound practice. 'Maybe one or two products, but natural oils, vulnerable packaging and expiration dates mean that your products could go rancid before you can get to them,' she said. Weingarten said she'll still buy Korean products if prices go up, but that the beauty world is bigger than one country. 'I'd still indulge in my favorites, but am always looking for great products in general,' she said. Bhasin, in Menlo Park, California, plans to keep buying her face masks too, even if the price goes up, because she likes the quality of Korean masks. 'If prices will go up, I will not shift to U.S. products,' she said. 'For face masks, I feel there are not a ton of solid and reliable substitutes in the U.S.'
Boston Globe
4 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Can Trump defeat ‘woke AI?'
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Enter Email Sign Up In addition, there are high-profile examples of AIs generating false information in an apparent effort to reflect racial and ethnic diversity. Last year, a Google AI image generator depicted Black people when asked for images of Vikings and showed Black men and Asian women as World War II German soldiers. Of course, there's also evidence that AI is sometimes biased against minorities, women, and gay people. But this isn't a high priority for the Trump administration. Advertisement Instead, it's mainly worried about AIs that are trained to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI. Hence, its new executive order seeks to purge DEI from all artificial intelligence systems used by the federal government. 'President Trump is protecting Americans from biased AI outputs driven by ideologies like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at the cost of accuracy,' said a statement issued by the administration. But Samir Jain, vice president of policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a tech-oriented political advocacy group, said the effort gets off to a bad start by mandating a ban on AI systems trained in DEI principles. 'The order itself is inherently contradictory,' said Jain, because eliminating DEI content from the training data will simply create a different form of bias. For example, he said, suppose the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces civil rights laws, relies on an AI chatbot for researching racial or gender discrimination cases. If the chatbot is purged of DEI-related content, it might miss relevant court cases or academic research. 'Then that tool is no longer as useful,' Jain said. Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ed Markey went further, arguing that the Trump AI plan is unconstitutional. In a letter, Markey urged the heads of leading AI companies to resist the proposal. 'Republicans are using state power to pressure private companies to adopt certain political viewpoints, in this case by pressuring the Big Tech companies to ensure that responses from AI chatbots meet some unspecified, vague definition of ideological neutrality,' Markey said. Andrew Hall, professor of political economy at Advertisement For instance, the order states that government workers using AI should be able to request ideologically-slanted information if they see fit. Thus, an AI would be barred from automatically flagging evidence of racism in government contracting. But a federal worker would still be free to ask the AI to seek out such evidence. Still, purging all political bias from AI chatbots is probably impossible. 'Any model inherently reflects the priority viewpoints of the model builders,' said Jain. 'There's a real question whether there's anything you could call objective AI.' Hall agrees that political biases can never be completely purged from AI chatbots. But he notes that not all biases are bad. A chatbot ought to be biased against Nazi ideology, or lynchings, for example. The big challenge comes when dealing with less extreme controversies, where people of good will harbor major disagreements. How can an AI be trained to present a balanced point of view? Hall offers a possible solution. In a recent research paper, he concludes that people are good at spotting left-wing bias in AI-generated information, regardless of their own political views. 'Americans view the bulk of LLM output on hot-button political issues to be left-slanted,' said Hall. 'Even Democrats say this, on net.' His research also found that when people perceive an AI's output as unbiased, they are more inclined to trust it. Hall says that this discovery opens the door to 'a thoughtful approach that puts the American public in charge.' The leading AI bots could have their output regularly reviewed by panels of ordinary people, who'd grade the content for biases. Bot makers could tweak their output accordingly. Advertisement Whatever method might be used by AI vendors to comply with the executive order could be equally applied to commercial and consumer versions of their products. That could mean that in a few years all of us will be using AI systems that don't lean quite so far to the left. Hiawatha Bray can be reached at
