■ENERGY
Temasek selling power firm
A Japanese-led consortium has won the bid for a Singaporean power company being sold by state-linked investment firm Temasek Holdings, sources told Dow Jones Newswires yesterday. Japan’s Marubeni Corp heads the consortium and will pay Temasek about US$2.5 billion for Senoko Power, they said. Senoko is the second of three local power generation firms Temasek is unloading as part of efforts to liberalize the domestic energy market. Temasek said in March that it had signed a share purchase agreement with SinoSing Power Pte Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of China Huaneng Group (華能), to sell Tuas Power Ltd for S$4.235 billion (US$2.96 billion). Temasek’s third power generator is Power Seraya.
■BUSINESS ETHICS
Court rules against Wal-Mart
Mexico’s Supreme Court on Thursday compared the practices of US retail giant Wal-Mart in Mexico to employer-worker relations during the dictatorship of former Mexican president Porfirio Diaz. The country’s top court backed a Wal-Mart employee who had complained that vouchers handed out by the company as part of its salary payments could only be spent in the company’s stores. The practice of vouchers “that come from the worker’s salary only to be exchanged in the management company’s establishment is similar to what happened in old company stores [during Diaz’s dictatorship],” the court said in its decision.
■BANKING
Seoul scraps limit on banks
South Korea will scrap the limit on purchases of non-deliverable forwards on the won, a finance ministry official said. The move will be effective from Sept. 8, Sohn Byung-doo, director in charge of the currency market at the ministry, said yesterday in Seoul. Banks may only buy a certain amount of this type of derivative. Non-deliverable forwards are derivatives that oblige traders to exchange one currency for another at a set price and date in the future. The derivatives are called “non-deliverable” because settlement is made in US dollars.
■MINING
Facility closed after deaths
BHP Billiton Ltd, the world’s largest mining company, suspended operations at its Western Australia iron ore mines following the second worker fatality in 10 days, the company said yesterday. Both deaths occurred at the company’s Yandi mine, in the Pilbara region, with the latest incident occurring on Thursday night after a collision between two vehicles, spokeswoman Samantha Evans said. Officials immediately halted operations at its Western Australia mines due to safety concerns, she said. The company did not know how long operations would remain suspended, Evans said.
■PHILIPPINES
Inflation hits new high
Inflation rose to its highest rate in nearly 17 years last month, climbing to 12.5 percent from a year ago, the government said yesterday. The National Statistics Office said the figure brings the country’s consumer price index for the first eight months of the year to 8.8 percent, up from 2.6 percent for the same period last year. It said prices for almost all commodities rose except for food, beverages and tobacco. The inflation rate last month was the highest since December 1991, when it was 13.2 percent.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
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