■ BANKS
Singapore lifts game ban
Singapore has lifted a ban on an Xbox video game featuring an intimate scene between two female characters, a newspaper reported yesterday. The game Mass Effect would now be sold with an "M18" label, meaning it cannot be legally purchased by anyone under 18, the Straits Times said, citing the city-state's media watchdog, the Media Development Authority. The futuristic space adventure video console game made by Microsoft was reported to have been banned on Thursday because it contained what the Board of Film Censors described as a "a scene of lesbian intimacy."
■ BANKS
Northern Rock boss resigns
Adam Applegarth, the chief executive of embattled British bank Northern Rock, resigned on Friday, his employer said. However, he will continue to run the group until about the end of January next year, Northern Rock added in a statement. Northern Rock ran into serious trouble sourcing credit in September as it became caught up in the fallout from the US subprime housing crisis. Northern Rock received financial help from the Bank of England as it grappled with the first run on a British bank in living memory.
■ AUTOMOBILES
Chrysler mulls changes
Chrysler LLC is considering wide-ranging branding changes that would streamline its product offerings and eliminate as many as 1,000 dealers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. A plan currently under discussion calls for Chrysler dealers to sell all of the automaker's passenger cars under the Chrysler name. Dodge dealers would sell only pickup and commercial trucks, and Jeep dealers would sell only Jeep and sport-utility vehicles, three dealers familiar with the discussions told the Journal for its online edition. The plan would allow Chrysler, which seeks to return to profitability by 2009, to drop some of its overlapping products.
■ ENERGY
Malaysia backs acquisition
The Malaysian government has allowed plantations-to-power group Synergy Drive to acquire 60 percent of the operator of the controversial Bakun hydroelectric dam, conglomerate Sime Darby said. Synergy Drive is the vehicle that merges state-linked firms Sime Darby, Golden Hope Plantations and Kumpulan Guthrie and their subsidiaries in an US$11 billion deal that will also create the world's largest listed palm oil firm. "Synergy Drive has received a letter of intention from the government approving in principle the acquisition of a 60 percent equity interest in Sarawak Hidro Sdn Bhd by Synergy Drive," Sime Darby said in a statement late on Friday. The approval is considered a major boost for Synergy Drive ahead of its stock market debut on Nov. 30.
■ ECONOMY
Asia in good shape: Kuroda
Asian economic growth will remain strong this year and next despite energy costs and recent market turbulence, Asian Development Bank president Haruhiko Kuroda said yesterday. He said there would be no change to the bank's latest regional growth forecast of 8.3 percent this year and 8.2 percent next year, although inflationary pressures stemming from high oil prices remained a risk. "There are a few risks ... but as I said, despite these risks, our main scenario for Asian economies is that growth will continue this year as well as next year," Kuroda said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured