Germany’s Siemens AG has decided to stand by a contract linked to a coal mine in Australia that climate activists had called for it to drop.
The German industrial conglomerate’s chief executive officer, Joe Kaeser, had promised to review Siemens’ involvement in the project in light of climate activists’ opposition.
Yet in a statement late on Sunday, Kaeser said that “there is practically no legally and economically responsible way to unwind the contract without neglecting fiduciary duties.”
Photo: Reuters
Siemens on Dec. 10 signed the contract to supply signaling systems for a rail link between the Carmichael coal mine and a port. The vast mine is owned by Indian firm Adani Power Ltd, and the contract is worth about 18 million euros (US$20 million) to Siemens.
Kaeser wrote that there were competitors — “thus, whether or not Siemens provides the signaling, the project will still go ahead.”
However, he added after a managing board meeting that “given the importance of legitimate environmental concerns, we have secured the right to pull out of the contract if our customer violates the very stringent environmental obligations.”
The group Fridays for Future, which has held weekly protests demanding action against climate change for more than a year, wanted Siemens to quit the mine project, because emissions from coal-fired power plants contribute to global warming.
Kaeser met the group’s representatives on Friday.
Leading Fridays for Future activist Luisa Neubauer called Kaeser’s decision “disastrous” and said the group was planning to demonstrate in front of Siemens offices yesterday.
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
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
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],”
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