POLAND
EU entry out until 2019: Tusk
Poland may not be able to join the eurozone for years because of a parliamentary impasse that could last through 2019, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in an interview published on Saturday. “We will not enter the eurozone without changing the constitution. We do not have that kind of majority today and my intuition tells me we will not have it in the next term either,” Tusk told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily. Because opposition conservatives reject the euro, the government lacks the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed to push through necessary constitutional changes. With the next parliamentary election scheduled for 2015 and terms lasting four years, the EU entry process may remain on hold until at least 2019, Tusk said.
TRADE
US-EU trade talks to start
Ambitious talks to create the world’s largest free-trade zone between the US and Europe open today amid friction over the US spying on its allies. The negotiations will have to bridge deep differences over protected industries on both sides of the Atlantic to achieve the goal of a deal by late next year. Top negotiators from the two sides are to meet today in Washington. On Wednesday, France called for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations to be put off while talks on snooping by the US National Security Agency on its allies, which are also to begin today at the US capital, take place.
AUTOMAKERS
EU outlook bad: Renault CEO
Renault SA chief executive officer Carlos Ghosn predicted that the European car market will probably shrink further next year and 2015 as rising unemployment continues to sap demand. “I think that 2014, 2015 are going to be at best stable in Europe,” Ghosn, who also runs Japan-based Nissan Motor Co — 43 percent owned by Renault, Europe’s third-biggest carmaker — said in an interview on Saturday in Aix-en-Provence, France. “More realistically, we may see another decrease, maybe not as violent, as deep as the ones we have seen for the last years, but I’m not very optimistic about the situation in Europe because I don’t see what is going to trigger, to really start the growth, particularly for the auto industry.” European car sales fell to a 20-year low in May as rising joblessness caused by a recession in the eurozone reduced demand at PSA Peugeot Citroen, Renault, Fiat SpA and General Motors Co.
ENERGY
Mine spat resolved: minister
Tensions between the Mongolian government and Rio Tinto Group over the US$6.6 billion Oyu Tolgoi mine have eased sufficiently to start shipping copper concentrate this week, Mongolian Minister of Mining Davaajav Gankhuyag wrote in a post on Twitter yesterday. “There is no significant problem with the Oyu Tolgoi mineral export contract,” Gankhuyag said. “The first shipments will start on July 9.” Scheduled shipments to Chinese smelters were postponed twice: First on June 14 at the request of Rio Tinto, which owns 66 percent of the mine though its Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd unit, and then on June 21 at the request of Ulan Bator, which holds 34 percent. Delays in shipments that were scheduled to start by the end of last month are costing Mongolia US$2 million in lost tax revenue every day, independent analyst Dale Choi said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained