■INVESTMENT
Buffett firm to join S&P 500
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc will soon join the S&P 500 and S&P 100 stock indexes after it acquires Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp (BNSF), Standard & Poor’s (S&P) said on Tuesday. Buffett’s company will replace BNSF in both indexes after shareholders approve Berkshire’s acquisition of the railroad company next month. Berkshire shareholders agreed to split the company’s Class B stock 50-for-1 last week, and that move gave Buffett’s company enough liquidity to meet S&P’s criteria. Berkshire shares jumped 8.2 percent to US$73.61 in after-hours trading on Tuesday.
■ELECTRONICS
LG swings to profit in Q4
South Korea’s LG Electronics said yesterday it swung to a fourth-quarter net profit thanks to robust sales of its flat-screen televisions and higher investment gains from its affiliate LG Display. The firm reported a net profit of 297.2 billion won (US$256.6 million) for October to December, compared with a net loss of 671.3 billion won a year earlier. The company said its fourth-quarter operating loss narrowed to 139.5 billion won from 309.8 billion, while sales rose 8 percent to 7.1 trillion won from 6.59 trillion. On Tuesday the firm announced a full-year net profit of 2.053 trillion won from 482.8 billion won a year earlier.
■SOFTWARE
Oracle plans to hire 2,000
Oracle Corp is planning to hire 2,000 sales and engineering employees, which will outnumber the cuts it is making at its latest acquisition, Sun Microsystems Inc, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told the newspaper that his company, the leader in proprietary database software, is charting a new course with its US$7.4 billion acquisition of server and software maker Sun Micro. It has been widely speculated that Oracle will slash Sun’s work force after the acquisition is completed, though Oracle has not said how many jobs would be lost. But Ellison said Oracle’s 2,000 new hires would outnumber cuts in Sun’s head count once it’s absorbed.
■SOUTH KOREA
Account surplus swells
South Korea’s account surplus swelled to a record high last year — a big turnaround from a deficit the year before when foreign investors fled the country. The country’s broadest measure of trade and investment ended US$42.67 billion in the black last year, the Bank of Korea said yesterday. The figure was an all-time high, statistics official Kim Sung-hwan said. South Korea had recorded a deficit of US$5.78 billion in 2008, the first dip into the red in the current account since a shortfall of US$8.29 billion in 1997, when the country was hit by the Asian financial crisis.
■UNITED STATES
Budget deficit to narrow
The US government’s budget deficit is expected to narrow slightly to US$1.349 trillion this year but its fiscal outlook remains bleak amid mounting debt, estimates by Congress showed on Tuesday. Accumulating deficits beyond this year could double federal debt held by the public to US$15 trillion within a decade, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said in a report. The warning came as President Barack Obama moved to unveil a partial spending freeze yesterday. The CBO, an independent nonpartisan agency that provides economic data to lawmakers, said the budget gap for this fiscal year would be “slightly smaller” than the record US$1.414 trillion chalked up last year.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique