■ FINANCE
British bank to raise capital
Royal Bank of Scotland investors on Thursday backed plans to raise £20 billion (US$29.5 billion) in fresh capital as part of a state rescue deal for Britain’s banking sector. RBS shareholders, holding an extraordinary general meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, voted by more than 99 percent in favor of the plan, the bank said in a statement. Under the recapitalization plan, RBS will ask for £5 billion from the British government in return for preference shares. The embattled group will also seek £15 billion from shareholders in a share placing underwritten by the Treasury. That means that the British government could end up owning a 60 percent stake in the bank. Three major British banks — HBOS, Lloyds TSB and RBS — were bailed out last month after they were hit by the global credit crunch and resulting financial crisis.
■ TECHNOLOGY
Zune offers subscription
Microsoft, seeking to boost the popularity of its Zune music player, announced a new subscription offer on Thursday that will allow users to keep 10 tracks a month permanently. A Zune Pass subscription currently gives Zune owners access to millions of tracks for US$14.99 a month but they are not allowed to keep them. The new offer would allow them to keep 10 tracks a month, a US$10 value, at no extra cost. The tracks can be burned to a CD or moved to other devices even if the Zune Pass subscription expires. The offer is aimed at boosting interest in music subscription.
■ AUTOMOBILES
Opel ‘not for sale’: GM
General Motors (GM) said on Thursday its German Opel nameplate is “not for sale” despite the perilous situation of the US auto giant. Tom Wilkinson, a GM spokesman said that some global brands like Opel “are so integrated into GM’s global operations, we would not or could not sell them. Opel is not for sale.” Any talk of a sale of the German unit “is just purely speculative,” he added. The comments came after a news report in Germany that car dealers could make an offer to buy the company. The regional parliament in the German state of Hesse voted unanimously to provide Opel with up to 500 million euros (US$626 million) in loan guarantees in the event that GM declared bankruptcy.
■ SINGAPORE
Bail-out plan unveiled
Singapore announced a US$1.5 billion package yesterday to help businesses gain access to credit amid a recession in the city-state and a global financial crisis. The government “is enhancing its business financing schemes to support an additional US$1.5 billion in loans to help local firms gain access to credit in this current economic slowdown,” the Ministry of Trade and Industry said. Up to 124,000 local companies will be eligible to benefit from the various schemes, which take effect on Dec. 1, it said.
■ TECHNOLOGY
Google chooses site
Google has bought a 75 hectare property in the north of Austria to erect a new European server farm within two years, the US Internet search engine giant said on Thursday. In a statement, Google spokeswoman Kay Oberbeck said the company looked at sites in a dozen European countries before settling on Kronstorf — population 3,000 — near the city of Linz. Still in the design stage, the server farm will employ 50 to 100 people, in an area chosen for its economic environment, qualified manpower, and ample electricity and water. Server farms house powerful computers that handle Internet requests for data.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
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