■BIOTECHNOLOGY
US states sue Amgen Inc
Amgen Inc, the world’s largest biotechnology company, is being sued by 15 US states after a probe into an alleged nationwide kickback scheme that aimed to boost sales, New York’s attorney-general said on Friday. Attorney-general Andrew Cuomo said Amgen and two units of AmerisourceBergen Corp offered kickbacks to physicians and others to increase sales of the anemia medicine Aranesp. The complaint charges that the companies gave free samples of Aranesp to medical providers such as physicians, then encouraged them to bill insurance companies and the government’s Medicaid program for reimbursement.
■FOREIGN EXCHANGE
Stiglitz weighs in on yuan
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said “there will have to be some adjustments in the exchange rate” between China’s yuan and the dollar. “It is very difficult to maintain fixed exchange rates in a very volatile economy for a very long period of time, which is why the world has abandoned the fixed exchange rate system,” he said in a speech in Shanghai yesterday. He said the US economy was still “nowhere near” the end of its recession and the labor market was in “very bad shape.”
■BANKING
Executives to meet with Fed
Executives of the US’ 28 largest banks will meet with Federal Reserve supervisors tomorrow to discuss the Fed’s plan to police bank pay policies, officials said on Friday. Under a plan recently put forward by the Fed, the central bank would review — and could veto — pay policies that could cause too much risk-taking by bank executives, traders or loan officers.
■INTERNET
Spam king ordered to pay
Spam king Sanford Wallace has been ordered to pay US$711 million in damages for bombarding Facebook members with unwanted messages, the social networking site said on Friday. The award was made at the San Jose District Court on Thursday, according to the announcement. Facebook said Wallace’s e-mails tricked many recipients into giving him their login information, or redirecting them to sites that paid him for each visit. It said Wallace committed 14 million violations of US anti-spam laws. In addition to the damages, Wallace was banned from accessing Facebook and slapped with a criminal contempt of court charge, which means he now faces possible jail time.
■PETROLEUM
Chevron lifted Q3 production
Chevron said on Friday it pumped its way through a weak third quarter, producing more oil as prices recovered from a severe plunge earlier in the year. The second-largest US oil and gas producer boosted revenues by increasing oil production by 11 percent. Its average sale price for crude and natural gas liquids over the past three months was US$62 per barrel, which is better than the previous quarter, but below the US$103 it fetched during the same period last year.
■AVIATION
EVA Air narrows loss
EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空), Taiwan’s second-largest air carrier, reported a nine-month loss that narrowed to NT$3.9 billion (US$120 million), or NT$1.67 a share, from a loss of NT$10.5 billion, or NT$4.65 a share, a year earlier, according to a stock exchange filing on Friday. EVA posted a NT$2.22 billion third-quarter loss compared with NT$4.51 billion a year earlier, while third-quarter sales fell 22 percent from a year earlier to NT$18.7 billion.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
PROTECTION: The investigation, which takes aim at exporters such as Canada, Germany and Brazil, came days after Trump unveiled tariff hikes on steel and aluminum products US President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered a probe into potential tariffs on lumber imports — a move threatening to stoke trade tensions — while also pushing for a domestic supply boost. Trump signed an executive order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to begin an investigation “to determine the effects on the national security of imports of timber, lumber and their derivative products.” The study might result in new tariffs being imposed, which would pile on top of existing levies. The investigation takes aim at exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil, with White House officials earlier accusing these economies of
Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable. The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. “When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard
PROBE CONTINUES: Those accused falsely represented that the chips would not be transferred to a person other than the authorized end users, court papers said Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case local media have linked to the movement of Nvidia’s advanced chips from the city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek (深度求索). The US is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance rocked the tech world in January, has been using US chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier. The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns that organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations such
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