The EU is ready to adopt decisive measures to tackle its sovereign debt crisis, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said yesterday.
“Member states, including France and Germany, and various EU institutions are ready to take decisive measures,” Fillon, in Japan until yesterday, told reporters through a translator after meeting Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda.
EU leaders were scheduled to hold talks yesterday to try and hammer out a comprehensive plan to tackle the eurozone debt -crisis, but a breakthrough was not expected until another summit on Wednesday.
Noda said that Japan, the world’s third-biggest economy, and France, agreed to cooperate over global economic issues.
“We have agreed to cooperate over how to respond to the global economy ahead of the G20 Cannes summit, including on the pressing issue of Europe’s debt,” he told reporters.
France hosts the G20 summit early next month and Europe’s efforts to contain its debt crisis will be a key issue on the summit agenda.
Fillon said that France’s priority for the G20 summit was to fix global economic imbalances and to coordinate economic policies among various nations.
Fillon and Noda also agreed to work together to enhance nuclear safety and bilaterally discuss energy policy, seven months after the world’s worst atomic crisis in 25 years unfolded at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in northeast Japan.
The two countries would cooperate in cleaning up areas contaminated by radioactive materials released from the plant, crippled by a huge earthquake and tsunami that struck in March, the leaders said in a statement.
They will also push for peer reviews of nuclear plants, or inspections organized by the UN’s atomic watchdog and set up a bilateral committee to discuss nuclear energy, the leaders said in the statement.
France is the world’s most nuclear-dependent country. After the Fukushima crisis, French nuclear operator Areva sold its equipment to decontaminate radioactive water to Tokyo Electric Power Co, the Fukushima plant owner.
POWERING UP: PSUs for AI servers made up about 50% of Delta’s total server PSU revenue during the first three quarters of last year, the company said Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) reported record-high revenue of NT$161.61 billion (US$5.11 billion) for last quarter and said it remains positive about this quarter. Last quarter’s figure was up 7.6 percent from the previous quarter and 41.51 percent higher than a year earlier, and largely in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$160 billion. Delta’s annual revenue last year rose 31.76 percent year-on-year to NT$554.89 billion, also a record high for the company. Its strong performance reflected continued demand for high-performance power solutions and advanced liquid-cooling products used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers,
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
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