FRANCE
Livestock industry falters
President Francois Hollande on Saturday called on retailers to give higher prices to livestock producers to help support them. The nation’s cattle, pork and milk sectors are in crisis due to stagnating prices and falling exports, with about 10 percent of the nation’s producers on the brink of bankruptcy, Minister of Agriculture Stephane Le Foll said on Friday. Farmers said a deteriorating international market, marked by a Russian food embargo, slowing Chinese demand and cheaper supply from other EU countries, has exposed long-standing pressures from business costs and retail consolidation in the nation.
AVIATION
Compensation offer rejected
Families of Germans killed in the crash of a Germanwings jet in the French Alps have turned down the airline’s compensation offer, demanding a higher amount of at least 100,000 euros (US$108,300), their lawyer said on Saturday. Lufthansa, the parent company of low-cost carrier Germanwings, announced on June 30 that it would offer compensation of 25,000 euros to the families of each of 72 Germans killed in the disaster in March. In addition, each of the victim’s immediate surviving kin — parents, children, adopted children, spouses and partners — would receive 10,000 euros. After the crash, Lufthansa offered aid of up to 50,000 euros per passenger to their relatives, independent of any eventual compensation payments. In addition, children and teenagers who had lost one or both parents are to receive support toward their education from a special fund of up to 7.8 million euros.
SOVEREIGN DEBT
Germans pan Greek bailout
More than half of Germans think the planned deal with Greece is bad and many would have preferred that the crisis-stricken country left the eurozone rather than getting the chance for further aid, according to an opinion poll. Lawmakers in Germany, the biggest contributor to eurozone bailouts, on Friday gave their go-ahead for the currency bloc to negotiate a third bailout for Greece that could total 86 billion euros (US$93.14 billion) over three years. In the YouGov survey seen by German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, 56 percent of respondents said they thought the plan for such a deal with Greece was bad, with just over one fifth of those saying it was very bad. Only 2 percent deemed it to be positive while another 27 percent said they thought it was somewhat positive. The poll of 1,380 Germans showed there was a lack of enthusiasm in Europe’s largest economy about the result of Friday’s vote, Welt am Sonntag said on Sunday, adding that the poll showed 48 percent of Germans would have liked to see Greece quit the eurozone.
APPS
Suit against Uber proceeds
Uber Technologies Inc lost a bid to dismiss a lawsuit over its claims to being safer than taxis. US District Judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco on Friday allowed the case to proceed, finding that the app-based ride-hailing service has advertised itself as “objectively and measurably safer” than competitors. Yellow Cab Co and 18 other taxi services that operate in Californian metropolitan areas including San Francisco and Los Angeles sued Uber in March, alleging it misleads customers about its background checks for drivers and driver safety. While letting the case move forward under a federal false advertising law, Tigar tossed the taxi companies’ unfair competition allegations and their demand for restitution under state law.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
PROTECTION: The investigation, which takes aim at exporters such as Canada, Germany and Brazil, came days after Trump unveiled tariff hikes on steel and aluminum products US President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered a probe into potential tariffs on lumber imports — a move threatening to stoke trade tensions — while also pushing for a domestic supply boost. Trump signed an executive order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to begin an investigation “to determine the effects on the national security of imports of timber, lumber and their derivative products.” The study might result in new tariffs being imposed, which would pile on top of existing levies. The investigation takes aim at exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil, with White House officials earlier accusing these economies of
Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable. The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. “When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard
PROBE CONTINUES: Those accused falsely represented that the chips would not be transferred to a person other than the authorized end users, court papers said Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case local media have linked to the movement of Nvidia’s advanced chips from the city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek (深度求索). The US is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance rocked the tech world in January, has been using US chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier. The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns that organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations such
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