The EU scathingly rejected Athens’s new bailout reform plan yesterday, throwing into doubt a meeting between Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and the leaders of Germany and France aimed at ending the crisis.
Brussels took just a day to dismiss the proposals that Greece submitted on Tuesday to its EU and IMF creditors, which have demanded tough reforms in exchange for giving Athens the rest of a pledged rescue package.
The mood further darkened as officials refused to confirm that a meeting between Tsipras, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande on the sidelines of an EU-Latin American summit in Brussels would now take place.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s spokesman said that the “ball is clearly in the court of the Greek government” if it wants to end a five-month standoff.
“Their latest suggestions do not reflect the state of discussions between President Juncker and Prime Minister Tsipras on Wednesday night” and further talks in Brussels this week, spokesman Margaritis Schinas told reporters.
He declined to say whether the EU was insisting on higher budget surplus targets than those proposed by the Greek government, a key sticking point along with reforms to Greek pensions.
Greece’s creditors have refused to pay out the final 7.2 billion euros (US$8.1 billion) of its bailout, which is due to expire at the end of the month after two previous extensions from last year.
Tsipras issued a dire warning on Tuesday that the fate of the eurozone, the central plank of a European project formed in the ashes of World War II, was at stake if the negotiations fail.
Any agreement would still require the approval of eurozone finance ministers, the Eurogroup, which is due to meet in Luxembourg next week.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts