■Electronics
Solectron to cut 12,000 jobs
Solectron Corp, the world's No. 2 maker of electronics for brand-name companies, will fire an additional 12,000 workers. The company forecast its ninth straight quarterly loss, and the shares fell 8.8 percent. Solectron predicted a third-quarter loss, excluding some costs, of US$0.01 to US$0.04 a share and said sales in the quarter ending in May will be US$2.6 billion to US$2.9 billion. The company, which had 75,000 employees in December, was expected to earn US$0.01 on sales of US$3.1 billion, the average Thom-son Financial estimates. The job cuts are on top of 40,000 firings already completed since 2001 and previously announced plans for another 1,000 by the end of August. Solectron, which assembles computers and networking gear for com-panies such as Hewlett-Packard Co and Cisco Systems Inc, has closed plants and moved produc-tion to lower-cost regions as clients have scaled back orders.
■ Tourism
Thai hotel bars Americans
A hotel on the Thai island of Koh Samui is refusing to accept American guests as a protest against the US invasion of Iraq. Wirat Pongchababnapa, owner of the Pavilian Resort on Lamai Beach, said American tourists were no longer welcome. "We think the United States is immoral and shows no respect for the UN resolution. [Bush] has started a war for no reason," the Bangkok Post quoted Wirat as saying yesterday. "If American tourists come to us, we will tell them politely that we cannot welcome them and we will give them a ride to other places." A Tourism Authority of Thailand official said the war was unlikely to affect tourism on Koh Samui.
Agencies
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