■TRANSPORTATION
London Tube to axe staff
London Underground is to cut 1,000 jobs to reduce costs amid the global downturn, it said on Thursday, in what unions called a “body blow” ahead of the 2012 London Olympics. No drivers or frontline Tube staff will be axed, a spokesman said. The most directly affected staff will be in the finance, IT, legal and administration departments. Several hundred more posts could also be axed across the Transport for London network as a result of an operating costs review. Gerry Doherty of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association said the cuts would affect services, adding that: “We shall fight any compulsory redundancies with every weapon at our disposal.”
■TRADE
WTO deal achievable: India
Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said on Thursday he was optimistic that the WTO could reach a new global free-trade deal in coming months. “I am optimistic that in the next couple of months with intensive negotiations we should be able to close this round,” he told delegates at the Davos forum in Switzerland, referring to the stalled Doha round of world trade talks launched in 2001. A traditional informal meeting of trade ministers in Davos is scheduled today, a spokesman for the WTO said, but the talks will be hamstrung by the absence of the US negotiator.
■UNITED STATES
California work week cut
A California judge ruled on Thursday that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger could close some state offices for two days each month from next month as the state grapples with its spiraling budget deficit. Unions representing state workers had gone to court to try to block the move, saying Schwarzenegger had exceeded his authority and that only state legislators could approve the cuts to the working week. But Judge Patrick Marlette said the state’s fiscal emergency justified the governor’s executive order, which translates into a pay cut of between 9 percent and 10 percent for affected workers. The cutbacks are scheduled to last until June next year, and are expected to save the state US$1.3 billion.
■FINLAND
Industrial output plummets
Industrial output last month declined the most since at least 1986 as the economy approached its first recession in 16 years. The annual 15.6 percent decline, adjusted for working days, compared with a revised drop of 9.2 percent in November, Helsinki-based Statistics Finland said on its Web site yesterday. The drop in output was caused by a slide in global demand as the eurozone, the US and Japan were simultaneously in recession for the first time since World War II. Finland’s economy will shrink “more than” 2 percent this year, Finance Minister Jyrki Katainen said last week.
■SOUTH KOREA
Production posts record fall
The nation yesterday reported a record fall of 18.6 percent year-on-year in industrial output last month, or 9.6 percent from November, a further sign that the export-driven economy is set for its first recession in more than a decade amid the global economic crisis. The contraction stemmed mostly from sharply falling exports and domestic consumption of such products as semiconductors and vehicles, the statistics office said in a statement. “With output declining for two months in a row, an economic downturn seemed to be accelerating,” it said.
SECTOR LEADER: TSMC can increase capacity by as much as 20 percent or more in the advanced node part of the foundry market by 2030, an analyst said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to lead its peers in the advanced 2-nanometer process technology, despite competition from Samsung Electronics Co and Intel Corp, TrendForce Corp analyst Joanne Chiao (喬安) said. TSMC’s sophisticated products and its large production scale are expected to allow the company to continue dominating the global 2-nanometer process market this year, Chiao said. The world’s largest contract chipmaker is scheduled to begin mass production of chips made on the 2-nanometer process in its Hsinchu fab in the second half of this year. It would also hold a ceremony on Monday next week to
TECH CLUSTER: The US company’s new office is in the Shalun Smart Green Energy Science City, a new AI industry base and cybersecurity hub in southern Taiwan US chip designer Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) yesterday launched an office in Tainan’s Gueiren District (歸仁), marking a significant milestone in the development of southern Taiwan’s artificial intelligence (AI) industry, the Tainan City Government said in a statement. AMD Taiwan general manager Vincent Chern (陳民皓) presided over the opening ceremony for the company’s new office at the Shalun Smart Green Energy Science City (沙崙智慧綠能科學城), a new AI industry base and cybersecurity hub in southern Taiwan. Facilities in the new office include an information processing center, and a research and development (R&D) center, the Tainan Economic Development Bureau said. The Ministry
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
RSS