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.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure