Taiwan chipmaker UMC says no ongoing merger 'activity' right now
TAIPEI :Taiwanese chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC) said on Wednesday that there was currently no ongoing merger "activity".
Chief Financial Officer Chitung Liu made the comment on an earnings call when asked about reports UMC and U.S.-based GlobalFoundries are looking into the possibility of a merger.
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Straits Times
2 days ago
- Straits Times
Australia to boost aerial surveillance of Pacific for illegal fishing fleets
FILE PHOTO: An Australian flag is pictured at its embassy in Beijing, China January 24, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File photo SYDNEY - Australia plans to significantly boost surveillance of Pacific Islands territorial waters, spending A$477 million ($310.72 million) on aerial patrols for illegal fishing fleets, tender documents viewed by Reuters show, as China takes steps towards sending its coast guard to the region. Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will visit Fiji on Friday, the Fiji Times newspaper reported, after the government of Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka last week approved a maritime security agreement that will see Australia fund a patrol boat for Fiji. Australia will operate commercial aerial patrols to support Pacific Island countries monitoring exclusive economic zones which span millions of kilometres of ocean. Efforts to tackle illegal fishing also led to a new monitoring centre being opened in Fiji in April. Australia's defence department declined to comment on the aerial tender, and Pacific Minister Pat Conroy did not respond to a request for comment. Reuters reported last week that China's coast guard is taking further steps towards high seas boarding of fishing boats in the Pacific for the first time, risking tensions with Taiwanese fleets that also ply the region. The Chinese Coast Guard demonstrated the capabilities of one of its largest ships, used to enforce maritime law in the Taiwan Strait, to 10 Pacific Island ministers, including Fiji's, in China a fortnight ago. China has registered 26 coast guard vessels for Pacific Ocean patrols with the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, although it is yet to conduct an inspection, WCPFC officials said. China declined to comment. Australia has gifted two dozen patrol boats to Pacific Island nations, and operates navy and air force patrols for illegal fishing in the region several times a year. Sangaa Clark, chief executive of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement, representing nine Pacific Island countries controlling the world's largest tuna fishery, said the group has not invited China to conduct coast guard patrols, and instead relied on Australian-funded surveillance and patrols by Australia, New Zealand, France and the United States. Pacific security expert Peter Connolly, a fellow at the University of New South Wales, said Chinese Coast Guard patrols in the region would "introduce geostrategic tensions to the policing of the Pacific's fisheries". "This is particularly likely because the two most common nationalities of illegal fishermen in the Pacific have been from the PRC and from Taiwan," he said, referring to the People's Republic of China. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
4 days ago
- Straits Times
US business group says Washington should treat Taiwan like partner not adversary
FILE PHOTO: A 3D-printed miniature model depicting U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese flag and fragment of Taiwanese flag in this illustration taken, April 17, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo US business group says Washington should treat Taiwan like partner not adversary TAIPEI - The United States should treat Taiwan like a partner and not an adversary, remove new and proposed tariffs, restore high-level cabinet visits and agree a double taxation deal, the American Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan said on Tuesday. Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, enjoyed strong support from U.S. President Donald Trump's first administration, which regularized arms sales that President Joe Biden continued. But Trump, as part of his sweeping tariffs on countries around the world, in April said he would put a 32% tariff on Taiwan, before pausing them for 90 days. Taiwan and the United States are still in talks to resolve the issue. AmCham Taiwan President Carl Wegner, releasing the group's 2025 White Paper, said he would be leading a delegation to Washington later this month to have "door knock" talks with officials on concerns about the tariffs and how to boost Taiwan-U.S. business ties. "Taiwan is a reliable friend of the United States, an essential democratic partner in the Indo Pacific, a major investor in American industry and a critical contributor to supply chain resilience," he told reporters in Taipei. Trade measures that were initially designed to address unfair practices by strategic competitors like China are now being targeted at friends like Taiwan, Wegner said. "It is in America's interests to ensure Taiwan is treated like a partner, not like an adversary." The White Paper said an agreement to avoid double taxation, currently stalled in the U.S. Senate, should urgently be resolved to remove investment barriers, while high-level visits by U.S. cabinet members should resume. Neither Taiwan nor the United States have provided substantive public updates on the tariff talks. The U.S. Department of Commerce did not respond to requests for comment sent outside of Washington office hours. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
AsiaOne
06-06-2025
- AsiaOne
Japan's ispace fails again at lunar touchdown with Resilience lander , Asia News
TOKYO — Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon's surface during its lunar touchdown attempt on Friday (June 6), marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace's second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has not been able to communicate with the spacecraft after a likely hard landing, ispace said in a statement. The company's live-stream of the attempted landing showed Resilience's flight data was lost less than two minutes before the planned touchdown time earlier on Friday. The lander had targeted Mare Frigoris, a basaltic plain about 900km from the moon's north pole, and was on an hour-long descent from lunar orbit. A room of more than 500 ispace employees, shareholders, sponsors and government officials abruptly grew silent during a public viewing event at mission partner Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp in the wee hours in Tokyo. Shares of ispace were untraded, overwhelmed by sell orders, and looked set to close at the daily limit-low, which would mark a 29 per cent fall. As of the close of Thursday, ispace had a market capitalisation of more than 110 billion yen (S$983 million). In 2023, ispace's first lander crashed into the moon's surface due to inaccurate recognition of its altitude. Software remedies have been implemented, while the hardware design is mostly unchanged in Resilience, the company has said. Resilience was carrying a four-wheeled rover built by ispace's Luxembourg subsidiary and five external payloads worth a total of US$16 million (S$20 million), including scientific instruments from Japanese firms and a Taiwanese university. If the landing had been successful, the 2.3-metre-high lander and the microwave-sized rover would have begun 14 days of planned exploration activities, including capturing images of regolith, the moon's fine-grained surface material, on a contract with US space agency Nasa. Resilience in January shared a SpaceX rocket launch with Firefly's Blue Ghost lander, which took a faster trajectory to the moon and touched down successfully in March. Intuitive Machines, which last year marked the world's first touchdown of a commercial lunar lander, made its second attempt in March but the lander Athena ended up on its side, just as in the first mission. Japan last year became the world's fifth country to achieve a soft lunar landing after the former Soviet Union, the United States, China and India, when the national Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency achieved the touchdown of its SLIM lander, although in a toppled position. Despite President Donald Trump's proposed changes to the US space policy, Japan remains committed to the American-led Artemis moon programme, pledging the involvement of Japanese astronauts and technologies for future lunar missions. Including a third one in 2027 as part of Nasa's Commercial Lunar Payload Services for the Artemis programme, ispace plans seven more missions in the US and Japan through 2029 to capture increasing demands for lunar transportation. [[nid:718788]]
