UNITED STATES
Wind-farm case dismissed
A Chinese-owned company’s lawsuit over an Oregon wind-farm transaction that was blocked by US President Barack Obama’s administration was dismissed by a judge in Washington, who said he lacks the authority to hear the case. “The parties to this transaction are not located in the district, they did not negotiate their transaction in the district, nor are any of the assets at issue located in the district,” US District Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in dismissing the complaint brought by Ralls Corp (羅爾斯). Tim Xia, an attorney for Ralls, said the company is disappointed by the ruling and will file a new complaint in a New York federal court.
INDIA
Shock stock dives explained
A Mumbai brokerage on Saturday blamed technical problems for “unintended” stock market transactions, a day after there was an unexpected dive in the values of the shares of two major companies. The statement came after the National Stock Exchange said on Friday that it would investigate what had prompted the surprise 10 percent plunge in the shares of Tata Motors and UltraTech Cement. “Due to some technical issues in the software, unintended transactions got executed. There was no broker error and no loss to any clients,” Religare Capital Markets said in a statement. Shares of both Tata Motors and UltraTech Cement slid suddenly about half an hour before the market closed, but they clawed back most of their losses within one to two minutes, dealers said.
FRANCE
Google to help news outlets
Google Inc will help the nation’s news organizations increase their online advertising revenue and also set up a 60 million euro (US$82 million) fund to finance digital publishing innovation, settling a dispute over whether the Internet giant should pay to display news content in its search results. European publishers bleeding money and readers had asked governments in France, Germany and Italy to make Google pay. The company threatened to stop indexing European news sites if it was charged for the content. The company says the settlement means it does not have to pay for “snippets” of news content that appear on a Google search page. The government appointed a mediator to lead negotiations with the nation’s publishers and said they’d come to a “happy conclusion” on Friday.
GERMANY
HP to close software unit
US computer giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) said on Friday it was closing its enterprise software operation in Ruesselsheim in a move eliminating at least 850 jobs. The facility employs about 1,100 people, but HP said 250 “will have the opportunity to transfer to HP partners or clients.” The California firm, the largest PC maker in the world, said 850 positions will be eliminated “due to efficiency gains, local partner outsourcing and consolidation with other HP global service delivery hubs.” The company said it submitted its plan to the German Supervisory Board, and expects to close the site by the end of October.
TOYS
Maker of iconic toy passes
Andre Cassagnes, the inventor of the Etch A Sketch toy that generations of children drew on, shook up and started over, has died in France, the toy’s maker said. He was 86. Cassagnes died on Jan. 16 in a Paris suburb, said Ohio Art Co, based in Bryan in northwest Ohio. The cause of death was not disclosed on Saturday.
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to