DIPLOMACY
India allows steel plant
India’s environment ministry has cleared South Korean steel giant POSCO’s planned US$13 billion steel plant in eastern India, but has asked the company to spend more on social welfare, an official said on Friday. The clearance was given a few days ago and will allow POSCO to go ahead with the massive plant in Odisha State, the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. He did not give further details. The clearance came days before South Korean President Park Geun-hye is to begin a four-day visit to India on Wednesday. The Odisha steel plant would be the largest-ever foreign investment in India.
INTERNET
France battles US firms
France has started the year with an array of skirmishes against Amazon.com, Google Inc and other US Internet companies, in what is shaping up as a classic battle between comfortable Gallic tradition and disruptive modernity. On Thursday, the French Senate unanimously approved a bill that would ban Amazon from offering free shipping on books in France. Strongly endorsed by the French Ministry of Culture, the legislation is supposed to safeguard the existence of the country’s 3,500 bookstores, about 800 of which are independent. France’s national agency for data protection announced earlier that its sanctions committee had found Google to be in breach of privacy laws, based on the company’s March 2012 decision to merge different privacy policies for each of its services.
AUTOMAKERS
VW’s plans leaked
Volkswagen AG (VW), Europe’s largest automaker, will add a mid-sized sport-utility vehicle in the US and probably produce it in Chattanooga, Tennessee, two people familiar with the matter said. The Chattanooga factory is favored over VW’s plant in Puebla, Mexico, to build the SUV for North American customers, said the people, who asked not to be identified speaking in advance of an official announcement. Any decision will be part of a wider move to sell the model in other markets, such as the Middle East or China, though the version sold in that country would probably be produced locally, one person said. VW has expanded to become the world’s third-biggest automaker, ranking behind Toyota Motor Corp and General Motors Co, thanks to sales increases in countries such as China and Russia.
AUTOMAKERS
Tesla to upgrade chargers
Tesla Motors Inc, which is under investigation by US regulators over fires in its Model S sedan after battery punctures, will upgrade wall-charger adapters following reports of overheating in garages. The charger connectors, which tether Tesla-issued cables to wall outlets, will be mailed out in the next two weeks, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in an interview on Friday. Overheating can stem from inadequate household wiring, he said. The decision to provide the improved part follows a series of about a half-dozen incidents, described on a Tesla-owner Web site and in some cases relayed to US regulators, in which Model S wall plugs melted or smoked while vehicles were recharging. The redesigned adapter will include a thermal fuse designed to shut off charging if overheating is detected, Musk said.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
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