EUROZONE
Juncker denies Italy threat
There is no threat of a new sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone, despite an anti-establishment coalition government taking office in Italy on Friday, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in remarks published yesterday. Asked by the RND network of German newspapers whether the currency bloc faced a new crisis, Juncker said: “No. The reactions of the financial markets are irrational. People should not draw political conclusions from every fluctuation in the stock market.” The Italian coalition comprises two parties hostile to the euro. “I am certain the Italians have a keen sense of what is good for their country,” Juncker said. “They will sort it out.”
SRI LANKA
IMF disburses part of loan
The IMF yesterday announced the release of the latest installment of the country’s US$1.5 billion bailout, but said that restructuring the lossmaking national airline is essential to sustain economic recovery. The IMF welcomed the island nation’s increase in fuel prices last month — a precondition for it to receive US$252 million of a three-year loan approved in June 2016. The IMF said Sri Lanka should also implement a pricing policy for electricity, which is subsidized for households and small businesses. Sri Lanka’s economy grew 3.1 percent last year, the slowest in 16 years.
TECHNOLOGY
Apple lets Telegram update
Secure messaging app Telegram on Friday said that Apple Inc cleared the path for an updated version, despite a ban in Russia. Telegram chief executive Pavel Durov thanked Apple and its CEO, Tim Cook, from his verified Twitter account for “letting us deliver the latest version of @telegram to millions of users, despite the recent setbacks.” A day earlier, Telegram accused Apple of blocking its updates for users worldwide after Russian authorities imposed a ban on Telegram for refusing to hand over keys to decrypt messages.
BANKING
Visa apologizes for failure
Visa Inc said its system in Europe is back to “close to normal levels” after a hardware failure prevented some transactions. “We apologize to all of our partners, and most especially, to Visa cardholders,” Amanda Pires, a spokeswoman for the company, said in an e-mailed statement on Friday. “The issue was the result of a hardware failure. We have no reason to believe this was associated with any unauthorized access or malicious event.” Visa said the system breakdown affected customers throughout Europe.
TECHNOLOGY
Wind farm gets bitcoin mine
A state-owned Estonian wind farm on Friday launched a cryptocurrency mine, hoping to cash in on nature’s unlimited supplies of power on a windswept Baltic Sea island, a company official said. “It is great that the decentralized money transfer blockchain technology has found its way to our wind farm. Hopefully, it will be a fruitful cooperation,” Eesti Elekter board member Oleg Sonajalg said in a statement on Friday. Eesti Elekter set up a container with banks of computers hooked up for 24-hour cryptocurrency mining at its seven-turbine, 6 megawatt Salme wind farm on the island of Saaremaa, off Estonia’s west coast.
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
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
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the