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SEOUL — South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics defied the global supply chain challenges to forecast a near-30 per cent jump in third-quarter operating profits on Friday.

The smartphone maker said it expected its operating profits to reach around 15.8 trillion won ($13.3 billion) in a regulatory filing, up 27.9 per cent year-on-year.

The company is the flagship subsidiary of the giant Samsung group, by far the largest of the family-controlled empires known as chaebols that dominate business in South Korea, the world's 12th largest economy.

The conglomerate's overall turnover is equivalent to a fifth of the country's gross domestic product.

Samsung Electronics estimated sales for the July-September period at 73 trillion won, up 9 per cent year-on-year — a record for any quarter, a spokeswoman said.

The coronavirus has wreaked havoc on the world economy, with lockdowns and travel bans imposed around the globe for many months.

But the pandemic — which has killed around 4.8 million people worldwide — has also seen several tech companies boom.

Coronavirus-driven working from home has boosted demand for devices powered by Samsung's chips, as well as home appliances such as televisions and washing machines.

Now supply chain problems are hitting economic activity around the world, with companies facing shortages of key commodities, components and shipping capacity.

But weakness in the South Korean won against the US dollar has boosted the chip maker's profit margins, particularly in its smartphone business, according to analysts.

The currency effect has offset troubles caused by "disruptions in smartphone shipments", which were triggered by parts shortages and coronavirus lockdowns in Vietnam and India, where Samsung has production lines, Hana Financial Group said in a report.

But forward prospects are looking less rosy, analysts say, with demand for DRAM memory chips — a key Samsung product — expected to fall in the fourth quarter as manufacturers struggle with supplies, pushing down prices.

"With the coronavirus spreading again in South East Asia and an ongoing electricity shortage issue in China, a disruption in any of the production lines can disrupt the whole production process," said Park Sung-soon, an analyst at Cape Investment & Securities. 

"With parts running short, demands for memory chips will decrease as well because companies can't produce set products," he said.

The operating profits estimate was in line with analyst forecasts according to Bloomberg News.

Samsung Electronics shares closed down 0.1 per cent.

Samsung's latest earnings estimate came after Lee Jae-yong, its vice-chairman and the de-facto leader of the wider Samsung group, walked out of prison in August. 

Lee was released on parole after completing just over half of his two and a half year sentence in the latest example of South Korea using economic grounds to free business leaders imprisoned for corruption or tax evasion.

He was jailed for bribery, embezzlement and other offences in connection with the corruption scandal that brought down ex-South Korean president Park Geun-hye.

His return to management has eased concerns over decision-making at Samsung.

But his August release is not the end of his legal travails: he remains on trial on separate accusations of manipulating a takeover to smooth his succession at the top of the Samsung group — the same controversy over which he was said to have sought help from Park.

NEW YORK — Global stock markets mostly fell on Friday following weaker-than-expected US jobs data as oil prices continued to rise, adding to inflation worries.

The much-anticipated Labour Department report showed the United States added only 194,000 jobs last month, less than half the number expected by analysts due to declining public sector staffing and lackluster hiring in bars and restaurants.

On the positive side, the unemployment rate ticked down more than expected to 4.8 per cent, and the last two months' jobs gains were revised upwards.

"It actually wasn't as bad as it appeared," JJ Kinahan of TD Ameritrade said of the monthly report, adding that the decline in hiring in schools skewed the overall figure.

Wall Street indices ended with modest losses for the day following a choppy session, but with weekly gains.

Analysts broadly expect the Federal Reserve (Fed) to stick with a plan to soon taper stimulus. That sets the stage for more choppiness in the weeks ahead, Kinahan said.

"I think we're going to continue to have more elevated volatility and volatile sessions because you're seeing the market pressures on interest rates in anticipation of the Fed at some point talking about when they are going to exactly start tapering," he said.

Next week sees the unofficial kick-off of third-quarter earnings season, with reports from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and other banks. Analysts worry that higher costs due to supply chain snarls and shortages of key raw materials will cut into corporate profits.

In Europe, stock prices in Frankfurt and Paris ended the day in negative territory. Only the FTSE in London closed the week on a stronger footing. 

"A bit of a flat end to an otherwise eventful week that has seen investors whipsaw between panic and optimism," said OANDA analyst Craig Erlam, adding that investors are "blissfully ignoring" risks such as higher energy prices "heading into crisis season". 

Oil prices resumed their upward trajectory on rising demand expectations and concerns over tight supplies.

Asian stock markets earlier closed their week out higher after a global rally Thursday as US lawmakers voted to avert a catastrophic debt default.

HONG KONG — Asian markets rallied on Thursday as investors breathed a sigh of relief that the United States looked set to avert a catastrophic debt default after Republicans offered a deal to raise the country's borrowing limit.

Joe Biden and Xi Jinping's decision to hold a virtual meeting also provided a much-needed boost to trading floors that have been starved of good news in recent weeks as they battle a string of problems including surging inflation, an expected taper of monetary policy and a growing energy crisis.

With just days to go before the United States runs out of cash, top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell proposed a truce, meaning Democrats can vote to hike the debt ceiling and allowing the government to pay its bills until December.

Democrats indicated their support for the move, which would mean avoiding missing US repayment obligations, which many experts and top officials including Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had warned would tip the economy into recession and cause another financial crisis.

"We're going to pay our debts, we have two months to figure out where we go from here," Democratic Senate budget chairman Bernie Sanders said.

The offer removed an increasingly dark cloud from over markets and sent Wall Street's three main indexes jumping out of a slumber to close Wednesday in positive territory.

Asia picked up the baton on Thursday, with Hong Kong up more than two percent, while Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul and Taipei all put on more than one percent. Sydney and Manila were also in the green.

However, observers pointed out that the deal is only a reprieve and lines up a similar standoff in two months.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki urged Republicans not to "kick the can down the road".

News that Biden and Xi would hold direct talks by the year's end -- albeit online -- added some optimism, raising hopes for a thawing of an increasingly frosty relationship between the superpowers. 

Caution remains  

That followed a six-hour meeting between US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and China's top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, in Zurich.

Concerns about an energy crunch were also eased very slightly Wednesday after the US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm suggested unlocking some of the country's vast crude reserves to keep a lid on prices, which this week hit seven high highs.

The cost of a barrel of oil has roared higher as the global economy reopens from Covid-19 lockdowns, while the approaching northern hemisphere winter has led to the price of natural gas to double from last month, forcing suppliers to seek out crude as a cheaper alternative.

OPEC's decision not to open the taps further has added to the problems.

The run-up in the energy market has ramped up fears that inflation -- already surging owing to the global recovery and supply bottlenecks - will continue to spike higher, forcing central banks to wind in their ultra-loose monetary policies earlier than envisaged to prevent prices running out of control.

All eyes are on the Federal Reserve, which has signalled it will begin tapering its bond-buying programme before the end of the year, bringing an end to the easy money that has helped drive the global equity and economic rebound.

A forecast-beating private jobs report Wednesday lifted expectations for a key government report at the end of the week. A strong reading on Friday will all but guarantee the tightening cycle will begin next month, analysts said.

Still, analysts remained cautious in light of recent hefty losses across world markets in recent weeks.

"We have several things that we are watching right now -- certainly the debt ceiling is one of them and that's been contributing to the recent volatility," Tracie McMillion, at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, told Bloomberg Television.

"But we look for these five per cent corrections to add money to the equity markets.

BRUSSELS - European commissioner Thierry Breton said on Wednesday that revelations by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen reinforced the EU's plan to regulate digital platforms.

After speaking to the US data scientist, who testified to US lawmakers on Tuesday, EU internal market boss Breton told reporters that it was "really urgent to legislate and not to weaken" Brussels' plans.

Last December, Breton proposed two draft laws known as DSA and DMA, which aim at stopping abuses by digital giants.

The bills are under discussion between the European Parliament and the Council of the bloc's 27 member states.

His conversation with Haugen had pushed him "not to weaken the proposals, despite lobbying to reduce obligations" imposed on platforms, Breton said.

He said he heard out her allegations against Facebook before going over the plans for European regulation with her.

"I got her perspective, especially on questions of transparency, data and algorithms," he said.

Haugen told Congress on Tuesday that it should strengthen regulation of Facebook, which she accuses of aiming to constantly ramp up teens' use of its services, which also include WhatsApp and Instagram.

She also said that Facebook removed filters set up to sift out disinformation after the US election campaign, aiming to boost visits to its platforms.

Some users went on to plan the demonstration preceding the January 6 invasion of Washington's Capitol building via Facebook properties.

If her claims prove true, such things "cannot be allowed to happen in Europe," Breton said, insisting that the Commission's plans would do the trick.

He added that Brussels was also weighing regulations on targeted advertising in response to calls from lawmakers.

While outside the remit of DSA and DMA, "it's a topic we're thinking about" for an upcoming bill, Breton said.

Haugen plans to travel to Brussels in early November where she could be heard by the European Parliament, he added.

LONDON — European and UK gas prices surged on Wednesday to record peaks, energised by fears of runaway demand in the upcoming northern hemisphere winter.

Europe's reference Dutch TTF gas price hit 162.12 euros per megawatt hour and UK prices leapt to 407.82 pence per therm in morning deals.

However, prices later erased gains to flatline in early afternoon trade.

"It's panic and fear with winter just around the corner," Commerzbank analyst Carsten Fritsch said.

Soaring gas prices — coupled with oil which has struck multiyear highs — have fuelled fears over spiking inflation and rocketing domestic energy bills.

Gas demand is also heightened in Asia, particularly from China, while key Russian exports are falling.

Europe to blame: Putin 

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared on Wednesday that Europe was to blame for the current energy crisis, after soaring gas prices spurred accusations that Moscow is withholding supplies to pressure the West.

"They've made mistakes," Putin said in a televised meeting with Russian energy officials.

He said that one of the factors influencing the prices was the termination of "long-term contracts" in favour of the spot market.

Some critics have accused Moscow of intentionally limiting gas supplies to Europe in an effort to hasten the launch of Nord Stream 2, a controversial pipeline connecting Russia with Germany.

At the same time, global gas stockpiles remain worryingly low.

"Natural gas prices have climbed to new peaks... as insufficient levels of inventories ahead of the winter season drive concerns for a spike in inflation and energy prices for consumers," XTB analyst Walid Koudmani said.

"These supply constraints could translate into higher costs of fuel moving into the winter months, a prospect which could further slow down economic recovery and worsen moods across markets."

Europe's energy crisis has also been exacerbated by a lack of wind for turbine sites, coupled with ongoing nuclear outages — and the winding down of coal mines by climate-conscious governments.

Gas demand has also galloped higher in recent months as economies reopened worldwide from their COVID-induced slumber.

"The rebound in industrial activity across the world following months of COVID-related restrictions and widespread remote working... boosted demand for natural gas," noted UniCredit economist Edoardo Campanella.

European gas futures have now multiplied by eight since April.

The market is set to shoot even higher, according to French bank Societe Generale.

"Never before have power prices risen so far, so fast," wrote Societe Generale analysts in a client note.

"And we are only a few days into autumn — temperatures are still mild.

"A cold winter could cause severe problems for Europe's energy markets, where politicians are already trying to contain the fallout."

European leaders are divided on how to respond to the record rise in energy prices, with France and Spain calling on Wednesday for bold EU-wide action, while others urged patience.

The European Commission — which is the European Union's executive arm — will next week propose measures to mitigate the price surge for consumers.

Those suggestions will then be discussed by the bloc's leaders at a summit in Brussels on October 21-22.

Britain is particularly exposed to Europe's energy crisis because of its reliance on natural gas to generate electricity.

PARIS — Hundreds of millions of people were unable to access Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp for more than six hours on Monday, underscoring the world’s reliance on platforms owned by the Silicon Valley giant.

But what actually caused the outage? 

According to Facebook, this is what happened.

In an apologetic blog post, Santosh Janardhan, Facebook’s vice president of infrastructure, said that “configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centres caused issues that interrupted this communication”.

In plain English 

Cyber experts think the problem boils down to something called BGP, or Border Gateway Protocol — the system the Internet uses to pick the quickest route to move packets of information around. 

Sami Slim of data centre company Telehouse compared BGP to “the internet equivalent of air traffic control”. 

In the same way that air traffic controllers sometimes make changes to flight schedules, “Facebook did an update of these routes”, Slim said. 

But this update contained a crucial error.

It is not yet clear how or why, but Facebook’s routers essentially sent a message to the internet announcing that the company’s servers no longer existed. 

Why did it take so long to fix the problem?

Experts say Facebook’s technical infrastructure is unusually reliant on its own systems — and that proved disastrous on Monday. 

After Facebook sent the fateful routing update, its engineers got locked out of the system that would allow them to communicate that the update had, in fact, been an error. So they could not fix the problem. 

“Normally it’s good not to put all your eggs in one basket,” said Pierre Bonis of AFNIC, the association that manages domain names in France. 

“For security reasons, Facebook has had to very strongly concentrate its infrastructure,” he said. 

“That streamlines things on a daily basis — but because everything is in the same place, when that place has a problem, nothing works.”

The knock-on effects of the shutdown included some Facebook employees being unable to even enter their buildings because their security badges no longer worked, further slowing the response. 

Is this unprecedented?

Social media outages are not uncommon: Instagram alone has experienced more than 80 in the past year in the United States, according to website builder ToolTester. 

This week’s Facebook outage was rare in its length and scale, however. 

There is also a precedent for BGP meddling being at the root of a social media shutdown.

In 2008, when a Pakistani Internet service provider was attempting to block YouTube for domestic users, it inadvertently shut down the global website for several hours. 

Outage’s impact

Between Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, “billions of users have been impacted by the services being entirely offline”, the Downdetector tracking service said.

Facebook, whose shares fell nearly 5 per cent over the outage, has stressed there is “no evidence that user data was compromised as a result of this downtime”.

But even though it lasted just a few hours, the impact of the shutdown ran deep. 

Facebook’s services are crucial for many businesses around the world, and users complained of being cut off from their livelihoods. 

Facebook accounts are also commonly used to log in to other websites, which faced additional problems due to the company’s technical meltdown.

Rival instant messaging services meanwhile reported that they had benefitted from the fact that WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger were down. 

Telegram went from the 56th most downloaded free app in the US to the fifth, according to monitoring firm SensorTower, while Signal tweeted that “millions” of new users had joined.

Among the more curious side-effects, several domain name registration companies listed Facebook.com as available for purchase. 

“There was never any reason to believe Facebook.com would actually be sold as a result, but it’s fun to consider how many billions of dollars it could fetch on the open market,” said cyber security expert Brian Krebs.