■ Telephony
AT&T could cut 10,000 jobs
AT&T Inc plans to cut up to 10,000 jobs, mostly through normal turnover, if its US$67 billion purchase of BellSouth Corp is approved by shareholders and regulators, AT&T's chief financial officer said. The work force reduction would take place over three years, AT&T's Rick Lindner said on Monday. Before the cuts, the combined company would have around 316,000 employees, including Cingular Wireless LLC, which is now an AT&T-BellSouth joint venture. The new company would be the US' largest phone company -- with nearly half of all lines. It would also be the largest cellphone carrier and the largest provider of broadband Internet service.
■ Telephony
Cingular offers video clips
Cingular Wireless LLC, the biggest US mobile-phone service provider, will begin providing sports and entertainment video clips to handset users. Viewers will be able to watch three- to five-minute clips from media companies including Fox News, ESPN and HBO, said Jim Ryan, a Cingular vice president. The service is available to subscribers who pay US$20 or more a month for broadband services. Carriers are racing to make viewing videos on handsets as easy as watching television. Verizon Wireless, the second-largest US carrier, began V-Cast for videos last year.
■ Computers
Sun sues Hynix
Sun Microsystems Inc, the world's fourth-largest maker of server computers, sued Hynix Semiconductor Inc over antitrust claims after four Hynix executives agreed to plead guilty to US criminal charges. The lawsuit, filed on March 2 in San Jose, California, claims Hynix, the world's second-largest maker of memory chips, and five other companies colluded to fix prices. A day earlier, the four Hynix executives agreed to serve prison sentences and pay fines of US$250,000 each in the US Justice Department probe of a conspiracy to set prices in the US$25.3 billion-a-year dynamic random access memory market.
■ Banking
UK card fraud down
Credit and debit card fraud fell significantly for the first time in 10 years last year in part due to the introduction of the chip and pin technology, figures showed yesterday. Total card fraud losses fell by 13 percent, from £504.8 million (US$886.3 million) in 2004 to £439.4 million (US$771.5) last year, according to figures from APACS, the UK payments association. "Seeing card fraud losses come down is cast-iron proof that chip and pin is doing its job," Sandra Quinn of APACS said in a statement. Chip and pin technology was introduced in 2003 and UK consumers are now no longer able to sign when paying with their cards but have to key in the four-digit pin.
■ Electronics
Hitachi plans robot
Hitachi is working on an R2D2-like security robot on wheels that can map out its surroundings using infrared sensors and a camera to detect missing items, suspicious packages and intruders. The 57cm tall robot, which looks like a trash can and is reminiscent of the small, beeping robot in Star Wars, has a swiveling camera that protrudes like a periscope, enabling it to watch for suspicious changes in the landscape and send photos to a guard, Hitachi said yesterday.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) plans to make advanced 3-nanometer chips in Japan, stepping up its semiconductor manufacturing roadmap in the country in a triumph for Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s technology ambitions. TSMC is to adopt cutting-edge technology for its second wafer fab in Kumamoto, company chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said yesterday. That is an upgrade from an original blueprint to produce 7-nanometer chips by late next year, people familiar with the matter said. TSMC began mass production at its first plant in Japan’s Kumamoto in late 2024. Its second fab, which is still under construction, was originally focused on
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
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