INDONESIA
Regulator arrested for graft
The head of the Special Task Force for Upstream Oil and Gas Business was arrested for allegedly receiving bribes from a private oil company, anti-graft officials said yesterday. The Corruption Eradication Commission on Tuesday confiscated US$400,000 in cash and arrested an unidentified man handing it over at the home of Rudi Rubiandini, chair of the task force, commission spokesman Johan Budi said. The raid also led to the arrests of an oil company official in western Jakarta along with Rubiandini’s driver and two security guards, Budi said without naming the oil company. An additional US$300,000 and a luxury motorbike were later confiscated from Rubiandini’s house in southern Jakarta, anti-graft commissioner Bambang Widjojanto said.
FOOD
Fonterra manager resigns
A senior manager at New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra resigned yesterday in the wake of a botulism scare. Fonterra said Gary Romano had already left the company. In his role as managing director of New Zealand Milk Products, Romano oversaw the tainted product line that sparked a global recall. Fonterra announced this month that hundreds of tonnes of infant formula could be tainted after tests found bacteria in whey protein concentrate that can cause botulism. Fonterra said last week that a recall of the products had been successful, with no reported cases of people contracting the disease.
ELECTRONICS
Samsung faces Brazil suit
A labor group said Samsung Electronics Co is facing a lawsuit from Brazil’s government, which is seeking damages over poor working conditions at the company’s assembly lines. Reporter Brasil, a labor rights group, said on its Web site that Brazil’s labor ministry found “serious” labor violations, including up to 15 hours of work per day and insufficient breaks, at Samsung’s Manaus factory. The group said the lawsuit is seeking US$108 million in damages. Prosecutors allege more than 2,000 workers suffered from health problems such as back injuries last year that were related to working conditions, the group said. Samsung yesterday said it would cooperate with Brazilian authorities.
INDIA
Inflation rises sharply
Inflation accelerated sharply to close to 6 percent last month as a weak rupee pushed up import costs, data showed yesterday, deepening worries about the slowing economy. The wholesale price index, the nation’s closest watched cost-of-living gauge, rose to 5.79 percent from a year earlier, up nearly a percentage point from 4.86 percent the previous month. Last month’s reading far outstripped market forecasts of a 5 percent year-on-year rise. The increase was driven by higher fuel imports and other costs after the rupee hit new lifetime lows against the US dollar in the past month.
AIRLINES
Cathay Pacific posts profit
Cathay Pacific Airways says it has eked out a small first-half profit as weak global demand continues to batter its air cargo business. The carrier yesterday said it earned HK$24 million (US$3.1 million) in the January-June period. That is a turnaround from the restated HK$929 million it lost in the same period last year, but less than analysts were forecasting. Hong Kong’s biggest airline said air cargo revenue fell 5 percent from the year before, while its passenger business saw some improvement. The airline said high jet fuel prices continued to have an “adverse” effect.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is