BANKING
Spain seeks to host EBA
Spain will compete with other countries in the EU to host the headquarters of the EU’s London-based bank regulator following Britain’s decision to leave the bloc, its deputy prime minister said on Friday. The race to host the European Banking Authority (EBA) is led by Paris and Frankfurt, but no decision has been reached and other countries have also put themselves forward in the scramble to give London’s agencies a new home. Spain has set up a working group to drive Spain’s bid for the EBA and for the London-based European Medicines Agency, Soraya Saenz de Santamaria told a news conference.
SRI LANKA
Central bank chief sacked
Sri Lanka’s president yesterday bowed to pressure from activists and replaced the country’s controversial central bank chief, appointing a respected economist to the top job. President Maithripala Sirisena announced that Indrajit Coomaraswamy, 66, had been appointed as the governor of the central bank, effective immediately. Coomaraswamy was previously a director of economic affairs at the Commonwealth Secretariat, an intergovernmental agency of Commonwealth countries in London. The announcement ended any prospect of outgoing governor Arjuna Mahendran being reappointed after his tenure ended on Thursday.
UGANDA
Refinery talks to begin
The government invited a group of companies led by SK Engineering & Construction Co of South Korea to begin negotiations to build an oil refinery, as it suspended a deal with a rival Russian company. The state halted talks with RT Global Resources Consortium after the group made “additional demands” from the government before a deal was to be signed last month, the Energy Ministry said on Friday. The government reached an agreement in principle with the group led by RT Global, a unit of Moscow-based Rostec State Corp, in May.
INTERNET
Facebook to translate posts
Facebook Inc on Friday began testing a translation tool that will automatically let posts be displayed in languages users prefer. The leading social network first made the “multilingual composer” tool available earlier this year for use on pages representing companies, brands, groups and celebrities through its Pages service. The factors Facebook is to use to determine which language to use for posts include locales designated in account settings and which languages users routinely use for their posts. Half of Facebook’s more than 1.5 billion users worldwide speaks a language other than English.
FOOD
Flour recalled over E coli
General Mills Co is expanding its recall of certain types of flour in response to an ongoing outbreak of illnesses related to a strain of E coli bacteria. The Minneapolis-based company on June 1 voluntarily recalled 2.2 million kilograms of its Gold Medal, Signature Kitchens and Wondra flour that health officials say was the likely source of dozens of illnesses in 20 US states. The flour is largely produced at the company’s Kansas City, Missouri, plant. On Friday, the company expanded the recall to include flour made earlier in the fall that might still be in consumers’ pantries.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”