AUTOMAKERS
Opel extends layoff promise
General Motors Co’s (GM) Opel unit has agreed to extend by two years until the end of 2018 a guarantee that workers at three German plants would not face layoffs. Saturday’s announcement came days after new GM chief executive Mary Barra visited Opel’s headquarters in Ruesselsheim and said the company’s plant there would get the job of building a new vehicle. She reiterated a commitment to turn around the unit after years of losses. The agreement concluded this week by Opel management and employee representatives applies to plants in Ruesselsheim, Kaiserslautern and Eisenach. Opel says the latter factory will build the next generation of the Adam and Corsa models. Production at a fourth German Opel plant in Bochum is to finish at the end of this year.
MINES
Wage talks postponed
Wage talks between a militant South African union and three major platinum mine owners have been adjourned until tomorrow, government mediators said. “Details of the content of discussions between parties may not be revealed,” they said, adding that they had made proposals that the two sides will consider. “The employers need time to reflect on the proposals, and they will do an offer on Tuesday” said Jimmy Gama of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, which launched the strike of about 80,000 miners on Jan. 23, crippling the platinum sector. For their part, the CEOs of the world’s top three platinum producers — Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), Impala Platinum (Implats) and Lonmin — said they would continue efforts to resolve the dispute while raising the specter of restructuring and layoffs if the strike persisted.
SPORTS
Cellino family eyeing Leeds
An Italian company run by the owners of Serie A team Cagliari is on the verge of taking over fallen English power Leeds United, pledging on Saturday to return the club to the Premier League. Leeds’ current owners, GFH Capital, a Bahraini investment bank, released a statement saying they have agreed to sell a 75 percent stake in the club to Eleonora Sport Ltd, which is run by the Cellino family. “They come to English football with an ambition to support Leeds United financially to take it to the Premier League and a belief that the club can sustain top-flight status,” GFH said in the Leeds statement. It added that the Cellino family “plan to invest substantially in the club.” The latest development comes amid a tumultuous few days at Leeds, with manager Brian McDermott saying on Friday that he was no longer in charge of the team after less than a year in the role.
MINING
Nigerian Areva mines reopen
Production resumed on Saturday at French nuclear giant Areva’s two uranium mines in Niger, which had shut down for weeks for maintenance amid hard-fought negotiations over the firm’s tax rate. “The machines are running and production resumed this morning,” Salifou Chipkaou, secretary general of mining union SYNAMIN, said by phone from the mining town of Arlit in northern Niger. An Areva spokesman confirmed that operations had resumed at the two mines, Cominak and Somair. The shutdown came as Niger’s government and the company, which is 80 percent owned by the French state, are holding tough talks over the future of uranium mining in the west African country, which is the world’s fourth-largest uranium producer, but is mired in poverty and ranks last on the UN’s Human Development Index.
Agencies
PETROLEUM
CPC prices unchanged
State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday it would leave the prices for its gasoline and diesel products unchanged this week from last week, as a declining New Taiwan dollar offset the decrease in global crude oil prices. CPC said in a statement that its average crude oil costs dropped US$0.29 per barrel to US$105.35 last week from the previous week, after global crude oil prices moved down earlier last week amid volatile market conditions. The company said the NT dollar depreciated NT$0.107 against the US currency last week, which offset the decline in crude prices. As a result, prices of CPC’s 98-unleaded gasoline remain NT$37.2 per liter, 95-unleaded gasoline NT$35.2 and 92-unleaded NT$33.7, while those of premium diesel are still NT$32.6 per liter at CPC stations.
BANKING
More visual aid ATMs
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has set a goal of installing another 103 ATMs for the visually impaired by the end of this year. As of the end of last year, there were 62 such ATMs in Taiwan, mostly at schools for the visually impaired, according to the FSC. It said the plan to set up an additional 103 ATMs for the visually impaired is part of a broader effort to provide more convenient services for people with special needs, including wheelchair users. Last year, the FSC asked the governments of Taiwan’s five special municipalities — Taipei, New Taipei City (新北市), Greater Taichung, Greater Tainan and Greater Kaohsiung — to install wheelchair-accessible ATMs, not just in the city centers but also at regional medical facilities and railway stations. As of June, there were 13,517 wheelchair-accessible ATMs throughout Taiwan, according to the FSC.
WEARABLES
Asustek working on watch
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) said on Tuesday that its first wearable device is likely to take the form of a watch, jumping onto a bandwagon already occupied by Sony Corp’s SmartWatch and Samsung Electronics Co’s Galaxy Gear. “We will put our entire design thought into it,” Asustek chairman Jonney Shih (施崇棠) said at the Taiwanese PC maker’s year-end party when asked by reporters about the company’s development of wearable devices. “There are actually many challenges in this area, and I don’t think products that lack special features will be useful. We’ll try to replace your watch by all means,” Shih said, adding that Asustek’s new wearable device should be available for consumers this year.
ECONOMY
Brazil to levy debt fines
A debts crackdown by Brazil’s central bank is set to hit several leading soccer clubs hard, including double World Club Cup winners Corinthians, media reports said on Saturday. The bank is looking to net about 40 billion reais (US$16 billion) in the way of fines from a range of companies, including leading soccer clubs such as Corinthians, Internacional, Santos and Copa Libertadores champions Atletico Mineiro. Other firms targeted include import and export companies as the bank indicated it was drawing up “efficient strategies” to face down the issue. Corinthians face a fine of 2.2 million reais (some US$800,000) while Atletico Mineiro are set to have to cough up 6.6 million. A 2012 report by a Brazilian bank put club debts at US$1.9 billion and several sides have fallen behind on salary payments as they battle a cash flow squeeze.
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],”
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
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