■ENERGY
Alaska approves pipeline
Alaska lawmakers have approved a state license for TransCanada Corp to pursue a natural gas pipeline. The approval ends a decades-long battle to open up North Slope natural gas for use on the North American market. The state Senate approved the bill on Friday; the House gave its approval last week. It only awaits the signature of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, who has backed the Canadian proposal from the start. The license does not guarantee construction, but TransCanada must move forward on federal permitting applications for the 2,735km pipeline, which is estimated to cost between US$26 billion and US$30 billion.
■AUTOMOBILES
Car sales drop in US
The lowest auto demand in the US since 1993, soaring fuel prices and a weak economy have impacted General Motors, Toyota and Chrysler, which on Friday reported a drop in sales last month. Troubled US car giant General Motors reported a 27 percent decline in US sales last month, as well as a massive second-quarter loss of US$15.5 billion, or US$27.33 per share. GM and its US competitors Ford and Chrysler have been hit by a fall-off in the sales of sports utility vehicles because of high gas prices and are now trying to switch production to smaller, more economical cars. Chrysler’s sales last month were 98,109 units, 29 percent below the same period last year.
■AVIATION
Airbus sells German plant
European aircraft maker Airbus said on Friday it had sold its plant at Laupheim in Germany to German armaments company Diehl and its partner Thales. No details were provided on the financial details of the sale, which is effective from Oct. 1 and is subject to competition authority approval. Diehl, based in Nuremberg in the southern German state of Bavaria, is to hold 51 percent of the company, while French defense concern Thales holds the rest. Airbus chief executive Tom Enders said the sale was a significant element in the implementation of the Power8 program aimed at cutting costs at Airbus.
■MARKET
Managua market destroyed
A huge fire destroyed Managua’s landmark Oriental Market, wiping out 1,500 vendor stalls and causing an estimated US$100 million in damage, local media reported early yesterday. The conflagration raged on Friday for 11 hours, destroying most of the sprawling Mercado Oriental, reputedly Central America’s largest market hall. No injuries were reported. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega promised merchants that the market hall would be rebuilt. The building had been the only one of Managua’s three main markets to survive the capital’s devastating 1972 earthquake.
■TELECOMS
India to auction airwaves
India said on Friday it plans a global auction for airwaves to offer high-speed third generation or 3G mobile phone services, a move seen reaping the government up to US$10 billion. The long-awaited announcement is expected to improve service and spur even greater growth in the world’s fastest-expanding mobile market, which has been adding 8 million new subscribers monthly. Communications Minister Andimuthu Raja said the license auction would be held by December. The government imposed a floor reserve price of 20.2 billion rupees or US$480 million for licenses, but bidding could go much higher, based on 3G auctions held elsewhere, for the 60 megahertz of spectrum up for grabs.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the