CANADA
US backs spending plan
US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is “very encouraged” by Canada’s infrastructure spending plan and expects it to draw positive reviews at the G20 meeting in Turkey that began yesterday, Finance Minister Bill Morneau said. Morneau spoke to reporters in Antalya, Turkey, Saturday evening ahead of the G20 summit, with leaders due to discuss ways to encourage global growth. Morneau said he spoke to Lew a few days earlier. “One of the things he said to me was that he was very encouraged by our infrastructure spending plan,” Morneau said. “He appreciated our focus on fiscal stimulus and felt that that was something that was going to be reacted to positively by our colleagues here at the G20.”
INTERNET
Gmail ramps up security
Google plans to ramp up security at its free e-mail service by letting users know when messages arrive via unencrypted connections that could be prone to snooping or tampering. “These warnings would begin to roll out in the coming months,” Elie Bursztein and Nicolas Lidzborski of the Gmail security team said in a blog post this week. “While these threats do not affect Gmail to Gmail communication, they might affect messaging between providers.” The announcement came with study results indicating that e-mail encryption is on the rise, along with measures to thwart spam and fraud by better authenticating messages. However, Google said that it found regions of the Internet where e-mail encryption was being covertly thwarted and also uncovered malicious servers programmed to essentially hijack Gmail messages by giving them bogus routing information.
AUTOMAKERS
VW finds new faulty cars
Volkswagen AG said 430,000 of its new cars had “implausible” carbon dioxide ratings as it continues talks with regulators in an attempt to address the emissions cheating crisis. The figure means more than half of the roughly 800,000 affected vehicles were from the 2016 model year. Volkswagen is still investigating previous model years and what the correct carbon dioxide ratings should be, the Wolfsburg-based company said in a statement late Friday. Meanwhile, the automaker is to present German authorities today with a fix for 1.6-liter diesel engines fitted with software to cheat tests for polluting nitrogen oxides, according to a person familiar with the plans, who asked not to be named. The proposal is not as complex or expensive as Volkswagen initially feared and could be used across Europe if it is approved in Germany, the person said.
BANGLADESH
Government seeks help
The government is to seek up to US$12 billion in assistance for infrastructure development during a two-day meeting with funding partners that began yesterday, a senior finance ministry official said. The nation spends only 2 to 3 percent of GDP on such investment, but needs to invest up to 12 percent to achieve the target of becoming a middle-income country, senior finance ministry official Mohammad Mejbahuddin said. “We are to place our requirements to them to ensure infrastructure development to become a middle-income country by 2021,” he told reporters on Saturday. Bangladesh wants to boost investment in infrastructure development by up to six times from current figures in its quest for annual economic growth of 8 percent.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San