Share prices on Bursa Malaysia opened mixed in early trading today, with the key index staying in negative territory due to profit-taking in selected blue chips, dealers said.
At 9.30am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI was 1.67 points easier at 1,817.26, after opening 0.33 of a point lower at 1,818.6.
Gainers outnumbered losers 163 to 118, with 222 counters unchanged, 1,136 untraded and 39 others suspended.
Turnover stood at 183.783 million shares worth RM86.514 million.
HwangDBS Vickers Research said the local bourse could tread sideways before the Budget 2014 details are unveiled around 4pm today.
"Consequently, the benchmark FBM KLCI may face stiff resistance at the 1,825 level," it said in a note today.
According to the research house, downside risk is also seen to be fairly limited, following a steady overnight performance by Wall Street.
Key US stock indices were up between 0.3 per cent and 0.6 per cent at the closing bell, lifted by better corporate earnings.
On the corporate front, HwangDBS Vickers Research said stocks that could add interest today were Tebrau Teguh, in response to news that the stock could be privatised by its major shareholder.
Others include, Deleum, which has been awarded a contract by Petronas to provide aftermarket turbo machinery maintenance services for gas turbines in Malaysia and Gadang.
The company has reported an almost three-fold jump in its latest quarterly net profit to RM7.1 million.
Meanwhile, on the scoreboard, the Finance Index lost 28.05 points for 16,843.63, the Plantation Index fell 14.22 points to 8,514.96, while the Industrial Index improved 12.83 points to 3,127.05.
The FBM Emas Index declined 5.85 points to 12,633.67, the FBMT100 Index slipped 7.35 points to 12,361.1, the FBM Ace fell 18.38 points to 5,553.21 but the FBM 70 rose 8.17 points to 14,364.06.
Among actives, The Media Shoppe lost half sen to 8.5 sen.
Sumatec-OR and Xidelang were each flat at nine sen and 40.5 sen,
respectively.
As for the heavyweights, Maybank and CIMB were unchanged at RM9.97 and RM7.67, respectively.
Two crew believed to be U.S. citizens were taken off a ship in Gulf of Guinea, U.S. official says
They are the ship's captain and chief engineer, the official says
U.S, Marines are on a Dutch ship in the region, part of maritime security exercises
Before attack, pirates had already seized 132 crew in Gulf of Guinea this year, group says
(CNN) -- Two mariners believed to be U.S. citizens have been taken from their U.S.-flagged ship following a pirate attack in the West African Gulf of Guinea, a U.S. official confirmed Thursday.
The attack on the oil platform supply vessel C-Retriever happened Wednesday off the coast of Brass, Nigeria. Two crew members -- the captain and chief engineer -- were taken off the ship, the U.S. official said.
Further details on Wednesday's attack, including the well-being of the two crew members or the condition of their ship, were not immediately available.
The C-Retriever is owned by Edison Chouest Offshore, which is based in Louisiana.
The oil-rich gulf has increasingly drawn international attention as a piracy hotspot, with 40 pirate attacks reported in the first nine months of 2013, the International Maritime Bureau reported.
It also has been the site of the only ship crew kidnappings worldwide this year, with 132 crew members taken hostage.
Seven ships have been hijacked, the organization said.
Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea accounted for 30% of the 1,434 reported piracy attacks in African waters between 2003 and 2011 and the pace of attacks has risen since then, London-based think tank Chatham House reported in March.
Chatham House reported 62 pirate attacks in the gulf in 2012, up from 39 in 2010.
The increase isin part due, the think tank said, to aggressive anti-piracy efforts by Western navies off the coast of Somalia, on the east side of the continent.
U.S. Marines are currently in the region aboard a Dutch ship off West Africa. Military forces from the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands and five African nations recently held exercises in the region designed to strengthen maritime security, according to the U.S. Navy.
The gulf produces some 5.4 million barrels of oil a day, according to Chatham House. Some 30% of U.S. oil imports flow through the region, according to International Crisis Group.
WASHINGTON — Contractors who built the troubled health care website faced heated questioning Thursday from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, as Congress held the first of what is expected to be many hearings aimed at understanding the problems with the HealthCare.gov site.
Politics, however, echoed throughout a hearing that delved into technical issues that threaten to tarnish the legacy of President Obama's signature domestic achievement.
Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president of CGI Federal, told the committee that the Obama administration ultimately bears responsibility as the "systems integrator or quarterback on this project." She and other contractors testified that confusion among the tech firms, as well as high demand for health insurance, led to problems with the website.
When the tech contractors were asked by Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., whether they recommended delaying the Oct. 1 launch of the website to the administration, they indicated it was not up to them.
"It was not our decision to go live," Campbell said, saying such a call was up to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). That agency was tasked with spearheading the project for the Obama administration because of its work with Medicare and Medicaid.
Andrew Slavitt of Optum/QSSI said the contractors' concerns, which were mostly related to testing, were shared with CMS officials. He said they understood the issues and were working on them.
"We did fully talk about the risks that we saw, and we passed them along," he said.
The House committee hearing comes as complaints about the website grow louder in Congress, with Republicans and Democrats seeking to extend the open enrollment period that began Oct. 1 and get clarification about when penalties will be levied on people who don't obtain insurance as required by law.
At times, the committee's majority Republicans framed the hearing as a discussion of blame while Obama's Democratic allies tried to steer the discussion into what needs to be done to fix HealthCare.gov. The hearing also occasionally veered into a discussion beyond technology, such as federal law dealing with the privacy of medical information.
"Did they not know? Or did they not disclose?" Upton said, suggesting the Obama administration is "allergic to transparency."
"This is not about blame," he said. "It's about accountability."
The White House said Wednesday night that it will soon issue policy guidance making clear that people who sign up for insurance by March 31, 2014, will not face a penalty. Still, Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., said he would seek a delay in the individual mandate -- a non-starter for the White House -- and a waiver for those who are unable to sign up through the online exchanges.
Obama has made fixing the health care website a top priority, as he and the administration seek to emphasize that the 2010 law is more than a piece of technology. The president has launched what he is calling a "tech surge" and tapped Jeffrey Zients, a former deputy White House budget director, to spearhead the effort to fix the troubled website.
The administration also created a series of "alpha teams" with insurance companies, after Sebelius met with industry executives and White House officials Wednesday. Sebelius said the teams will "iron out kinks in both the (enrollment) forms and in direct enrollment."
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said the Affordable Care Act is "an enormous success, with one obvious problem," which is the technology.
"If we want this law to work, we've got to make it right, we've got to fix it, not what the Republicans are trying to do: nix it and repeal it," said Waxman.
Campbell, of CGI Federal, said another contractor was responsible for the technology that allowed users to create new accounts and which caused the initial bottleneck issues on the site. She called the tech glitches a "front-door problem," stressing that the online exchange has steadily improved over the past two weeks.
Responding to questions about whether the website was tested, Campbell said it was done throughout the process of building HealthCare.gov. She said CGI's portion of the site worked when it was tested, but when it was integrated into the entire system, it did not work, she said.
She and Slavitt said the contractors would have preferred more time to test the technology. "Months would be nice," he said.
Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., said the website's problems are "exactly how outsiders predicted this would turn out."
"I don't want this to be a failure," he said. "I want you all to get it fixed. But I'm very disturbed that CMS did not give you significant time to test the system."
Officials from Equifax Workforce Solutions and Serco also testified alongside Campbell and Slavitt. The GOP-led committee had wanted Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to appear, but she cited a scheduling conflict and will appear next week.
While Democrats such as Waxman stressed the benefits of the health care law, the concern about the long-term impact of the website's problems is apparent.
Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, the most vulnerable Senate Democrat on the ballot in 2014, joined Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., in calling on the White House to extend open enrollment beyond March 31 and to provide guidance on penalities for the uninsured.
"I believe, given the technical issues, it makes sense to extend the time for people to sign up," Pryor said in a statement Wednesday. "In addition, the administration should state clearly how the enforcement mechanism will work if people can't sign up in time."
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