■ELECTRONICS
World Cup boosts sales
South Korean firms are enjoying a boom in sales of 3D televisions thanks to rising demand stoked by the World Cup in South Africa, officials said yesterday. Samsung Electronics has sold more than 26,000 3D TVs in the domestic market so far this year, including 6,000 this month, thanks to the World Cup, a company spokesman said. Samsung’s domestic rival, LG Electronics, has also seen a jump in 3D TV sales this month, selling more than 3,000 units at home.
■BANKING
RBS cashes out of UAE
Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank says it has agreed to buy the Royal Bank of Scotland’s retail banking business in the United Arab Emirates. The Abu Dhabi bank said yesterday that the deal was valued at US$100 million. The announcement comes a day after RBS said it had agreed to sell its operation in Pakistan to Faysal Bank Ltd for about US$50 million.
■BANKING
Swiss tax treaty passed
Swiss lawmakers approved a UBS AG tax treaty, ending a two-year legal battle with the US authorities that threatened the bank’s US operations. The agreement, through votes in both chambers of parliament, came after eleventh-hour negotiations between the upper and lower house, in which deputies dropped a demand for the treaty to be subject to a nationwide referendum.
■TRADE
Singapore exports soar
Singapore’s exports, led by electronics, surged last month, laying the groundwork for the city-state to post a second consecutive quarter of double-digit economic growth. Exports excluding oil rose 24 percent last month from a year earlier to S$13.5 billion (US$9.7 billion), according to Trade and Industry Ministry figures released yesterday. Sales abroad fell a seasonally adjusted 0.1 percent from April, it said.
■STEEL
POSCO invests in Africa
South Korea’s POSCO, the world’s fourth-largest steelmaker, said yesterday it was planning joint ventures in Zimbabwe as part of an effort to secure stable supplies of essential raw materials. The firm has signed a memorandum of understanding with Zimbabwe-based Anchor Holdings to cooperate in exploiting silica and other minerals, a spokesman for the South Korean firm said. The steelmaker said it also agreed to buy a 7.8 percent stake in a coal mine in Mozambique but gave no value for the deal.
■INTERNET
AOL to sell Bebo
AOL, the once high-flying Web company, is close to selling the social networking site Bebo to a California-based private investment firm, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. The newspaper, citing “people familiar with the matter,” said the exact terms of the deal were not available, but the selling price is a “small fraction” of the US$850 million AOL paid for Bebo two years ago. US technology blog TechCrunch reported AOL was selling Bebo for “US$10 million or less.”
■FINANCE
Mortgage buyers delist
Government-sponsored mortgage purchasers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac plan to delist their shares from the New York Stock Exchange after having trouble meeting stock listing requirements. The companies’ regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, expects their shares to trade on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board, an electronic quotation service, starting next month.
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
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
‘ARMED GROUP’: Two defendants used Chinese funds to form the ‘Republic of China Taiwan Military Government,’ posing a threat to national security, prosecutors said A retired lieutenant general has been charged after using funds from China to recruit military personnel for an “armed” group that would assist invading Chinese forces, prosecutors said yesterday. The retired officer, Kao An-kuo (高安國), was among six people indicted for contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法), the High Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement. The group visited China multiple times, separately and together, from 2018 to last year, where they met Chinese military intelligence personnel for instructions and funding “to initiate and develop organizations for China,” prosecutors said. Their actions posed a “serious threat” to “national security and social stability,” the statement
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