■ MANUFACTURING
Steel plant halts work
Steelmaking is on hold at the ArcelorMittal plant in Cleveland, Ohio, because of a drop in business. Both blast furnaces were idled last week, and the company plans to offer voluntary layoffs with partial pay starting this week. About 1,450 union members work at the plant. Mark Granakis, president of the United Steelworkers local in Cleveland said there could be as many as 400 job reductions. ArcelorMittal spokeswoman Katie Patterson says updated information could come on Wednesday when the company announces third quarter earnings.
■MINING
Vale slashes output
Brazilian mining giant Vale, the world’s largest producer of iron ore, said it was to slash output at mines in Brazil and elsewhere by up to 10 percent from Saturday to adjust to shrinking demand caused by the global financial crisis. Vale will cut production at facilities in Brazil, China, France, Indonesia and Norway, and some 2,300 workers — nearly four percent of the company’s workforce of 62,600 — will be put on temporary leave, it said in a statement. The company decided to reduce “the mineral production of iron by the equivalent of 30 million metric tons per year,” Rio-based Vale said in its statement on Friday.
■GERMANY
Merkel touts rescue plan
Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday called on banks struggling to cope with the fallout from the global financial crisis to take advantage of a state rescue package. The help was available to the banks and financial institutions to ensure they could continue with their primary functions of “lending and managing savings,” Merkel said in a video message on her Web site. Weekly news magazine Der Spiegel said on Saturday that the government was considering new measures based on the British government’s bank rescue plan, to be applied in the coming days. On Friday troubled German property lender Hypo Real Estate became the first private financial institution to take advantage of the government package.
■SOUTH KOREA
Bank of Korea confident
The nation is unlikely to fall into a financial crisis because of unstable financial market conditions stemming from the global credit turmoil, the Bank of Korea said. “Households, companies and banks’ ability to endure a crisis is maintained at a good level in general,” the central bank said in its semiannual Financial Stability Report. “Chances aren’t high it will lead to an overall crisis of our financial system.” The bank cut interest rates by a record in an emergency move last week after the won plunged to a 10-year low and the Kospi stock index fell the most in two decades.
■ELECTRONICS
Sanyo eyes Panasonic shares
Sanyo Electric Co is largely in agreement with a bid by Panasonic Corp to take a majority stake in the company and thereby become Japan’s largest electronics manufacturer, a press report said yesterday. Panasonic president Fumio Otsubo and Sanyo president Seiichiro Sano reached the “broad agreement” last month, public broadcaster NHK without naming its sources. Panasonic would make the bid public, possibly this week, if it managed to reach agreement with Sanyo’s top shareholders, the network said. The major shareholders — Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp, the Daiwa Securities SMBC group and the Goldman Sachs group — hold a total of nearly 430 million preferred shares in Sanyo.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
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