■INSURANCE
Aviva turns profit
Aviva made a net profit of £747 million (US$1.3 billion) in the first half of the year after a loss a year earlier, the British insurance giant said yesterday. “In a challenging economic environment Aviva has returned to profit,” Aviva chief executive Andrew Moss said in the company’s results statement. “Life and pensions margins have improved, the general insurance business has beaten our targets and our regulatory capital position has strengthened significantly.”
■CONSUMER PRODUCTS
Unilever profit falls
Unilever NV PLC, the maker of Dove soap, Lipton tea and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, said yesterday profit fell 17 percent in the second quarter as its profit margins eroded amid the economic downturn. Net profit at the consumer products giant was 758 million euros (US$1.09 billion) in the quarter, down from 909 million euros in the same period a year earlier, while sales rose 1 percent to 10.5 billion euros. “While conditions remain difficult in many markets, I am encouraged by the return to volume growth across all regions,” chief executive Paul Polman said in a statement.
■TELECOMS
German firm’s profits rise
German telecommunications group Deutsche Telekom posted a solid jump in its second quarter net profit yesterday as it integrated a recent Greek acquisition and confirmed its full-year targets. Deutsche Telekom recorded a 32 percent hike in profit to 521 million euros (US$750 million) on sales that increased by 7.4 percent to 16.24 billion euros. Core earnings that the telecoms operator uses in its forecast rose by 8.4 percent from the same period a year earlier to 5.26 billion euros, slightly better than expected, a statement said.
■MEDIA
News Corp loses US$203m
News Corp said on Wednesday it lost US$203 million in the latest quarter due to a huge writedown at MySpace. Despite the loss, the sprawling New York-based media company that owns the Wall Street Journal, the Fox broadcast network, Sky Italia and newspapers in Britain and Australia said the economy was slowly turning around and predicted revenue growth in the current fiscal year. “Advertising markets, while weak and particularly hurt by the slump in cars and finance, have shown some good signs of life,” chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch said on a conference call.
■AUSTRALIA
Unemployment holds steady
The unemployment rate held steady at 5.8 percent last month, official figures showed yesterday, beating analyst forecasts as the jobs market showed unexpected resilience. Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed the loss of 16,000 full-time positions was offset by 48,200 new part-time positions, defying economists’ predictions of a rise to 6 percent. “This a certainly a major surprise,” Craig James, chief economist with stockbroker Commsec, told Sky News, adding employers seemed to be hiring again as hopes rise that the worst of the financial crisis is over.
■COMPUTERS
Cisco earnings drop 46%
Cisco Systems Inc said earnings fell 46 percent in its latest quarter and the company said the quarter may have been the bottom of the recession-related downturn. CEO John Chambers said he expects a slight increase in revenue in the current quarter compared with the just-ended one.
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
A former television news host and six military personnel — active and retired — have been indicted on espionage charges, Kaohsiung prosecutors said yesterday. Lin Chen-you (林宸佑), a former CTi News host and YouTuber, last year allegedly made videos at the direction of a Chinese agent criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party’s recall campaign, the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office told a news conference in Kaohsiung. He allegedly received 4,325 tether coins for the videos from an unidentified person surnamed Huang (黃), believed to be an agent of a hostile foreign power, they said. Lin, also known as Ma Te (馬德), has a show named
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