■ Banking
Watchdog warns over strike
The 12-day-old strike at Citibank-owned KorAm bank could disrupt South Korea's financial market and should be resolved quickly, the Financial Supervisory Commission said yesterday. KorAm's 2,500 unionized workers began the strike June 25, demanding wage hikes and job guarantees in the wake of a takeover by US-based Citigroup earlier this year. "If the ongoing labor-management negotiations are not resolved smoothly and such situation continues, the related government authorities will not be able to continue to neglect the issue because losses at the bank as well as possible confusion in the financial market can be foreseen," the commission said in a statement. Since the strike, customers have withdrawn more than 2 trillion won (US$1.7 billion) from the bank, and only 56 of its 223 branches have been operating normally.
■ Software
Microsoft inks China deal
Microsoft Corp has agreed to establish a global stra-tegic tie-up with Digital China Holdings, the domes-tic information technology (IT) distributor and soft-ware company said yester-day. Digital China said the companies had signed a memorandum of under-standing to work together in various fields, including software technician train-ing, research and develop-ment, and the design of industry solutions products. The two companies will jointly research and develop software applications to a number of sectors in China, involving customs, telecoms and taxation system proces-ses. Digital China used to be the exclusive distributor for Toshiba, but in April the Japanese IT firm signed up ECS Technology (China) Ltd and Highly Information Industry Co Ltd as new general sales agents for its laptops.
■ Employment
German jobless decline
The number of people looking for work in Ger-many, the biggest euro-zone economy, fell for the first time this year in seasonally adjusted terms, official data showed yesterday. Never-theless, the decline was minimal, with Germany's economic recovery not sufficiently strong to lead to any real job creation, the statistics showed. The seasonally adjusted jobless total fell by 1,000 to 4.369 million, or 10.5 percent of the workforce, the Bundes-bank calculated. It was the first time this year that the seasonally adjusted total has declined and beat analysts' expectations for a rise of around 10,000 dole claimants. In unadjusted terms, the German jobless total fell by around 60,000 to 4.233 million -- or 10.2 percent of the workforce -- last month, separate data published by the Federal Labor Agency in Nuremberg showed.
■ Singapore
BP selling retail business
Singapore Petroleum Co said yesterday that it will buy British Petroleum's (BP) retail marketing business in the city-state and has conditionally agreed to buy BP's stake in a liquified petroleum gas venture, in a deal worth about US$70 million. The deal would boost Singapore Petroleum's network of service stations in Singa-pore from 10 to 40. Both deals are expected to be completed by the end of this year, the company said in a statement to the Singapore Exchange. Earlier this year, Singapore Petroleum and ChevronTexaco bought out BP's one-third stake in Sing-apore Refining Co, raising their stakes from one-third each to 50 percent.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Wednesday said that a new chip manufacturing technology called “A16” is to enter production in the second half of 2026, setting up a showdown with longtime rival Intel over who can make the fastest chips. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of advanced computing chips and a key supplier to Nvidia and Apple, announced the news at a conference in Santa Clara, California, where TSMC executives said that makers of artificial intelligence (AI) chips will likely be the first adopters of the technology rather than a smartphone maker. Analysts said that the technologies announced on
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
CALL FOR DIALOGUE: The president-elect urged Beijing to engage with Taiwan’s ‘democratically elected and legitimate government’ to promote peace President-elect William Lai (賴清德) yesterday named the new heads of security and cross-strait affairs to take office after his inauguration on May 20, including National Security Council (NSC) Secretary-General Wellington Koo (顧立雄) to be the new defense minister and former Taichung mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) as minister of foreign affairs. While Koo is to head the Ministry of National Defense and presidential aide Lin is to take over as minister of foreign affairs, Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) would be retained as the nation’s intelligence chief, continuing to serve as director-general of the National Security Bureau, Lai told a news conference in Taipei. Koo,
MANAGING DIFFERENCES: In a meeting days after the US president signed a massive foreign aid bill, Antony Blinken raised concerns with the Chinese president about Taiwan US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and senior Chinese officials, stressing the importance of “responsibly managing” the differences between the US and China as the two sides butt heads over a number of contentious bilateral, regional and global issues, including Taiwan and the South China Sea. Talks between the two sides have increased over the past few months, even as differences have grown. Blinken said he raised concerns with Xi about Taiwan and the South China Sea, along with China’s support for Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, as well as other issues