Latest news with #Huan
The Star
12-05-2025
- Business
- The Star
Trial of the former Vietnamese deputy minister in rare earth case opened
HANOI: The trial of the case of Thai Duong Company and related units illegally exploiting rare earth at the Yen Phu mine in Yen Bai Province opened in Hanoi on Monday (May 12). Among 27 defendants on trial, seven are former leaders and employees of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Department of Natural Resources and Environment of Yen Bai Province. They are prosecuted for the crime of "violating regulations on management and use of State assets causing loss and waste" as defined under the Penal Code. They are Nguyen Linh Ngoc, former deputy minister; Nguyen Van Thuan, former director of the General Department of Geology and Minerals; Hoang Van Khoa, former director of the Department of Minerals (belonging General Department of Geology and Minerals); Le Duy Phuong, former senior specialist of the Department of Minerals; Ho Duc Hop, former director of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment of Yen Bai Province; Le Cong Tien, former deputy director of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment of Yen Bai Province; Bui Doan Nhu, former deputy director of the Sub-department of Environmental Protection of Department of Natural Resources and Environment of Yen Bai Province. The other 20 defendants are directors, deputy directors, accountants and staffs of companies of Thai Duong, the Vietnam Rare Earth Joint Stock Company, the Truong Son War Invalid Joint Stock Company, Duong Lieu Logistics Company, Hop Thanh Phat Transport Company, Atexim Company and HUYHUANG Company. The charge is for: "violating regulations on resource exploitation, accounting causing serious consequences, and causing environmental pollution, smuggling, and receiving property obtained through criminal acts." According to the indictment by the Supreme People's Procuracy, this is an especially serious case related to the exploitation, business operations, export and State management of mineral resources. Doan Van Huan, acting as the head of Thai Duong Company, organised and directed the illegal mining of rare earth and iron ore at the Yen Phu mine between 2019 and 2023. The total value of illegally extracted minerals is over VNĐ864 billion (US$34 million), of which Huan and his accomplices sold ores worth more than VNĐ763 billion ($30 million). Huan also directed the creation of two accounting systems, causing a tax loss of over VNĐ9.6 billion ($380,000) to the State. In 2012, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment assigned Deputy Minister Nguyen Linh Ngoc to oversee matters relating to geology and minerals, and to supervise the General Department of Geology and Minerals – the agency responsible for receiving and evaluating applications for mineral exploitation licence. Previously, in 2011, the general department received a licence application for rare earth mining at Yen Phu mine from Thái Dương Company. Ngoc then signed a report to the Prime Minister recommending the issuance of the licence, stating that 'the application dossier meets all requirements.' The Government Office then issued a document instructing relevant ministries to direct the investor to formulate a project on deep processing of rare earths, along with an environmental impact assessment report. The PM also issued a directive to strengthen State management over the exploration, mining, processing, use and export of mineral resources. Following this directive, Thai Duong Company prepared an investment project for a rare earth deep processing complex, including a hydrometallurgical plant in Yên Bái and a separation-processing plant in Dinh Vu of Hai Phong City. Subsequently, on December 14, 2012, the Government Office sent a document to the Ministries of Natural Resources and Environment, and Industry and Trade, and the People's Committee of Yen Bai Province to convey the Prime Minister's opinion: 'In principle, approval is granted for the exploitation and processing of rare earth ores at Yen Phu, provided that the ores are deeply processed, no raw ores are exported, and all legal obligations under the Mineral Law are fulfilled; the exploitation rights must not be transferred to foreign organisations or individuals.' Upon receiving this document, Deputy Minister Nguyen Linh Ngoc instructed the General Department to finalise the licensing procedures for Thai Duong Company. At that time, the project had changed in both scale and nature. It was no longer just a mining and ore-processing project, as initially proposed in 2011, but included three inseparable components of mining and ore-processing project, the hydrometallurgical plant in Yên Bái and the separation-processing plant in Hai Phong. However, Thai Duong Company's application dossier only included an investment certificate for the mining and ore-processing project, issued by the Yen Bai Province People's Committee in 2011 (which expired in 2012) and had not been renewed or reissued. There were no investment certificates for the hydrometallurgical plant in Yên Bái or the separation-processing plant in Hai Phong. Furthermore, Thai Duong Company's equity capital did not meet the legal requirement of 30 per cent of the project's total investment (having only VNĐ200 billion ($7.9 million) compared to a total investment of VNĐ1.953 trillion ($77 million), which violated the Mineral Law. Nevertheless, officials at the General Department still used the 2011 appraisal results to submit the application. Deputy Minister Nguyen Linh Ngoc, despite reviewing and knowing that Thai Duong Company did not meet the necessary conditions, still signed off on the licence in 2013. The procuracy concluded that the actions of the leaders and officials at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment contributed to enabling Huan to illegally exploit and sell rare earth and iron ore worth a total of VNĐ736 billion ($29 million). The trial is expected to last ten days. - Vietnam News/ANN
Business Mayor
21-04-2025
- Automotive
- Business Mayor
China's CATL says it has overtaken BYD on 5-minute EV battery charging time
CATL has unveiled upgraded battery cells it claims can offer faster charging for electric vehicles than its rival BYD, putting the two Chinese groups ahead of competitors in the race to overcome a major barrier to the shift away from petrol vehicles. The world's biggest electric vehicle battery maker said on Monday that a new version of its flagship Shenxing battery cell could offer a 520km range from just five minutes of charging time. Last month, BYD shocked the industry by unveiling a charging system that could add about 470km in range to its batteries in about the same time. The claims by the Chinese battery groups would put them ahead of major western rivals. At present, Tesla vehicles can be charged up to 200 miles (321km) in added range in 15 minutes, while Germany's Mercedes-Benz recently launched its all-electric CLA compact sedan, which can be charged for up to 325km within 10 minutes using a fast-charging station. Analysts have said the deployment of high-speed charging systems from BYD and CATL will help to eradicate consumer fears about EV driving range, even though there are questions as to how fast the companies can bring these technologies outside China amid rising geopolitical tensions. The second generation of the Shenxing battery, which boasts a range of 800km on one charge, can achieve a peak charging speed of 2.5km per second, the company said at a media event ahead of this week's Shanghai auto show. 'We look forward to collaborating with more industry leaders to push the limits of supercharging through true innovation,' said CATL's chief technology officer Gao Huan, adding that he wanted the new batteries to become 'the standard for electric vehicles'. Huan said the new Shenxing battery would be installed in more than 67 EV models this year. He later told reporters that energy density would not be sacrificed as a trade-off for fast charging. During its tech day, CATL also unveiled its new sodium-ion battery, which it said would go into mass production in December. The battery brand called Naxtra is able to give a range of about 200km for a hybrid vehicle and 500km for an electric vehicle, according to Huan. Sodium-ion batteries are seen as a cheaper and safer alternative to the lithium-based batteries widely used for energy storage, because they work better at both very high and low temperatures. But the amount of energy they can produce relative to their size has long lagged behind lithium batteries, making sodium cells impractical until now. The new technology has also been closely watched as a potential solution to reduce the world's dependence on China for critical minerals, since sodium-ion batteries do not use lithium resources. At the event, Huan claimed the new sodium-ion battery would enable the industry's shift from 'single resource dependence' to 'energy freedom' and reshape the global energy landscape. He added that he was in discussions with several companies about using sodium-ion batteries in their vehicles. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
Irish Times
21-04-2025
- Automotive
- Irish Times
China's CATL says it has overtaken BYD on 5-minute EV battery charging time
CATL has unveiled upgraded battery cells it claims can offer faster charging for electric vehicles than its rival BYD, putting the two Chinese groups ahead of competitors in the race to overcome a major barrier to the shift away from petrol vehicles. The world's biggest electric vehicle battery maker said on Monday that a new version of its flagship Shenxing battery cell could offer a 520km range from just five minutes of charging time. Last month, BYD shocked the industry by unveiling a charging system that could add about 470km in range to its batteries in about the same time. The claims by the Chinese battery groups would put them ahead of major western rivals. At present, Tesla vehicles can be charged up to 200 miles (321km) in added range in 15 minutes, while Germany's Mercedes-Benz recently launched its all-electric CLA compact sedan, which can be charged for up to 325km within 10 minutes using a fast-charging station. READ MORE Analysts have said the deployment of high-speed charging systems from BYD and CATL will help to eradicate consumer fears about EV driving range, even though there are questions as to how fast the companies can bring these technologies outside China amid rising geopolitical tensions. The second generation of the Shenxing battery, which boasts a range of 800km on one charge, can achieve a peak charging speed of 2.5km per second, the company said at a media event ahead of this week's Shanghai auto show. 'We look forward to collaborating with more industry leaders to push the limits of supercharging through true innovation,' said CATL's chief technology officer Gao Huan, adding that he wanted the new batteries to become 'the standard for electric vehicles'. Huan said the new Shenxing battery would be installed in more than 67 EV models this year. He later told reporters that energy density would not be sacrificed as a trade-off for fast charging. During its tech day, CATL also unveiled its new sodium-ion battery, which it said would go into mass production in December. The battery brand called Naxtra is able to give a range of about 200km for a hybrid vehicle and 500km for an electric vehicle, according to Huan. Sodium-ion batteries are seen as a cheaper and safer alternative to the lithium-based batteries widely used for energy storage, because they work better at both very high and low temperatures. But the amount of energy they can produce relative to their size has long lagged behind lithium batteries, making sodium cells impractical until now. The new technology has also been closely watched as a potential solution to reduce the world's dependence on China for critical minerals, since sodium-ion batteries do not use lithium resources. At the event, Huan claimed the new sodium-ion battery would enable the industry's shift from 'single resource dependence' to 'energy freedom' and reshape the global energy landscape. He added that he was in discussions with several companies about using sodium-ion batteries in their vehicles. - Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
Forbes
19-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
AI Gets Memory With Chips From Micron And Others
Integrated Circuit, Film-Layout of a Printed Circuit Board. (Photo by Mediacolors/Construction ... More Photography/Avalon/Getty Images) News broke yesterday that Micron Technology is shaking things up with a new focus on a 'cloud memory business unit' that will create something called HBM chips or high bandwidth memory chips. HBM chips are 3-D stacked SDRAM microprocessors traditionally used with high-performance hardware setups. Over in the world of model design, we're seeing LLMs get more memory capacity and more utility out of the context data that they keep in memory. So it makes sense that this hardware revolution would be occurring. The interesting thing is who the players are. Insiders note that Micron is a top global provider of HBM chips, along with Samsung and a company called SK Hynix. So who's actually making these chips? Take Samsung, for example. Industry news reveals that Samsung is working with its rival foundry partner TSMC to develop the HBM chips. We've seen so many times how TSMC has a dominant position in the market as a foundry. Other companies use TSMC for the raw fabrication power, and develop their own plans on top of TSMC's production capability. That in turn has led to everything from a shortage of vehicle chips, to more recently, some troublesome geopolitical problems around production having to do with export controls. It seems like the world would be in a lot better shape if there were, say, a dozen foundry makers around the world. Anyway, in creating these high-design chips, do Samsung and TSMC compete with Nvidia? Not exactly. Other industry reporting shows that Nvidia was planning to buy the chips from Samsung, but the vendor company couldn't meet Nvidia's bar. A March 20 press release shows Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang saying Samsung 'has an important part to play,' but noting that the company hasn't formally ordered Samsung HBM3E chips. First of all, the HBM chip is a 3-D stacked DRAM type of chip. The memory unit sits close to a CPU or GPU, to conquer latency and provide high bandwidth with low power consumption. I asked ChatGPT more about the specs for these chips, and it came out with this: Bandwidth: 819 GB per second, per stack Speed: 6.4 GB per pin Capacity: up to 64 GB per stack Thermals: better efficiency Use cases: AI, HPC, GPUs (In this context, we're talking mainly about using it for AI applications.) ChatGPT also gave me this interesting graphic comparing the HBM's build to something called GDDR6, a gaming chip that's cheaper and more widely available: You can get more from public resources like this one on how the HBM has been engineered to fit very specific needs. Let's look briefly at this corner of the tech market, for enterprise context that CEOs (or anyone else) might want to know about. First, we have Nvidia down around 40% from all-time highs within the past year, and crawling back down toward $100 per share in recent trading cycles, ostensibly based on U.S. export controls. The assertion of Huang and company that Nvidia is poised to lose $5.5 billion due to new rules has been big news lately. Then there's Micron, at around $70 per share currently, about one half of all-time high values, and down significantly since winter. As for Samsung, which looks like it's down 8% in a short time frame. Companies like AMD are also down. 'A warning from AI chips champion Nvidia that it will face a $5.5 billion hit from tightened U.S. controls on exports to China marks a new chapter in the escalating tit-for-tat between Washington and Beijing,' AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said, as quoted by Elsa Ohlen writing for Barron's. That's a little on some of the great new hardware developments happening now. The context, in terms of LLM news, is the advancement of models with persistent memory. I've talked about using an AI chat companion from Sesame, for example, and how 'Maya' seemed to remember my name, as a return user, on a good day. Along with chain of thought, memory is a big capability builder for all of those vibrant use cases that we have come to expect from our neural net friends and neighbors.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Food banks seeing increased need and fewer donations amid economic strain
WATERTOWN, Tenn. (WKRN) — Americans are being more cautious with how they spend their money; the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed consumer spending dropped in January 2025. It has food banks, like Jake's Blessing Box in Watertown, stuck in the middle as donations go down and need goes up. Diane Huan, the organizer of Jake's Blessing Box, said donations have dwindled. Report finds cost to build single-family homes could increase amid lumber tariffs 'It seems like there are always needs that are being filled,' Huan said. 'They're not as quickly being filled as they were before.' She opened the pantry in April 2024 at Watertown Church of God of Prophecy on South Pearl Avenue. Huan said the pantry serves about 500 people a month. 'Being a pastor's wife and being right here off the highway, more and more people have come to us and said, 'Could you just help with groceries a little bit?'' Huan said. Huan said she thinks the decline in donations, and the rise in people asking for help, has been caused by a rocky economy. Some experts agree with her, with Census data showing retail and food service sales up just 0.2% since January. Haun said she's proud to be doing the Lord's work and helping families. ⏩ 'With the cost of rent being so high [and] the cost of groceries being so high, at the end of the month they're at the end of the paycheck and they don't have enough to feed their families,' Huan said. Jake's Blessing Box is open every day from sunrise until sunset. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
