UNITED STATES
Firms to reveal data requests
AT&T Inc is to join rival Verizon Communications in disclosing details on US government requests for customer data starting next year. “Like Verizon recently announced, we intend to publish a semi-annual online report that will provide information on the number of law enforcement requests for customer information that our company receives in the countries in which we do business,” AT&T said in a statement on Friday.
EUROZONE
IMF releases Cyprus bailout
The IMF released the next installment of its bailout of Cyprus on Friday, launching the latest stage in its support plan for the desperately struggling eurozone economy. The IMF said 83.5 million euros (US$114 million) was newly available to Cyprus, bringing to 250 million euros the amount it has disbursed from the three-year loan extended to Cyprus.
PUBLISHING
News Corp acquires firm
News Corp said on Friday that it acquired Storyful, a company that gathers user-generated news and video, for US$25 million to help it grow its digital and video business. Storyful, which bills itself as a “news agency of the social media age,” finds, verifies and acquires news content that people share online. New York-based News Corp said its newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, is already a Storyful customer.
INVESTMENT
Morgan Stanley to divest
Investment bank Morgan Stanley on Friday announced plans to sell part of its commodity business to Russian oil giant Rosneft for an undisclosed sum. The transaction covers Morgan Stanley’s “global oil merchanting” business, which engages in global storage, trading and transportation of oil and petroleum products. While the deal includes physical holdings of oil and refined products associated with existing contracts, it will not not include Morgan Stanley’s stake in oil pipeline and terminal company TransMontaigne, the bank said.
INFRASTRUCTURE
Finnish Rail buying trains
Finnish Rail said on Friday it is buying 80 electric locomotives from Siemens for more than 300 million euros (US$410 million), in one of the largest such deals in Europe this year. The VR rail group says the entire fleet is to be delivered by 2026 with the first locomotives being operational in 2017. The purchase also includes an option for an additional 97 engines from Germany’s Siemens Rail Systems. VR Group said the deal is expected to close early next year.
BIOMEDICAL
Firm tests artificial heart
French biomedical firm Carmat on Friday said it had begun the first human trial of its prototype artificial heart, which aims at overcoming shortages of organs available for transplant. The implant operation, which took place on Wednesday at the Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris, “went satisfactorily,” it said in a statement.The patient, whom it did not name, is in intensive care, “is conscious and speaking to relatives,” Carmat said, adding that it was too early to draw wider conclusions about the operation.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
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