Google chairman Eric Schmidt had some stern words for the National Security Agency this week, saying the NSA’s reported hacking of Google’s data centers was “outrageous” and “perhaps illegal” (paywall). But some Google employees are venting their rage in a much less constrained fashion.
At least half a dozen explosions outside a provincial Communist Party headquarters killed one person and injured at least eight on Wednesday in Shanxi, a northern province of China, according to state media reports.Ball bearings were scattered at the scene, (link in Chinese) suggesting the explosions were the result of improvised explosive devices. That bombing is the second terrorist incident of terrorism in China in less than 10 days, after a car plowed into a group of people in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and burst into flames, killing five and injuring 38.
What to watch for today
What to watch for today
Tokyo Electric Power’s once-proud reputation is nearly as radioactive as its ruined Fukushima nuclear plant, and the government is running out of patience. A panel organized by the ruling Liberal Democrat party is considering a recommendation to partially break up the company known as Tepco.
Nokia’s outgoing CEO Stephen Elop was in Vietnam this week to inaugurate a new manufacturing plant, but it won’t be making fancy new smartphones running software from Microsoft, which recently agreed to buy Nokia’s handset business. Instead the factory will churn out hundreds of millions of bare-bones feature phones for the developing world.
Just last week, things were looking pretty sunny for Huawei in Australia. The Chinese telecom firm, previously banned from bidding on the country’s National Broadband Network because of concerns about national security under the old Labour government, was hearing all the right noises.
Who is Bunda Putri?
Jamie Dimon may be under fire for presiding over a sprawling banking enterprise forced to set aside $23 billion to cover a panoply of lawsuits, but at least no one has accused JP Morgan of lending to organized crime. Not so Mizuho Financial Group, which is ensnared in a scandal over loans to the country’s yakuza criminal syndicates.
You wouldn’t think that Samsung would need any illicit assistance in competing against HTC: Samsung is the 800 lb. gorilla of the smartphone industry, controlling nearly a third of the global market, while HTC has suffered a dramatic plunge in its market share and stock price.
Samsung has quickly apologized to China for selling faulty memory chips that allegedly caused its smartphones to malfunction—the latest in a long line of foreign firms that have asked forgiveness of China’s 1.4 billion people. In the case of Samsung, as in many of the corporate mea culpas, state media zeroed in on differences in the way Chinese customers were treated (Samsung wouldn’t provide free repairs or a replacement for phones with a memory chip problem, as it does in other countries) that it said was an injustice.
Thailand says it wants to clean up its act as a hotbed of human trafficking, but those efforts took a hit this week, after a report alleged that government immigration officials are involved in the sale of Rohingya refugees near the tourist mecca of Phuket.
Cher Wang, the billionaire co-founder and chairwoman of the troubled Taiwanese electronics firm HTC, is taking over many of the day-to-day duties of CEO Peter Chou, who has presided over an ugly decline in the company’s fortunes—it has lost 70% of its market share and 90% of its market capitalization since the high-water mark in 2011.
With all of the recent revelations about the US National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, it must be hard for the Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer Huawei not to gloat a little bit.
What to watch for today
The Tea Party politicians who are taking the US government to the brink of default are getting some heat from the land where tea began. Chinese Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao, anxious that a US default that would affect China’s $1.28 trillion in US Treasurys, lashed out at “the attitude of the Tea Party,” in a press briefing on Tuesday—and the Tea Party lashed right back.
The numbers: Bangalore-based Infosys posted a scanty 1.2% increase in net profit for the three months to Sept. 30, falling short of analysts’ already-lowered estimates. The top line was a happier story: Revenue surged nearly 32%, to 129.65 billion rupees ($2.12 billion), due mostly to the devaluation of the rupee. The company expects full-year revenue growth of 9-10%, versus 6-10% previously.
Updated with comment and detail from Foxconn.
Flipkart, the e-commerce firm frequently touted as India’s answer to Amazon, must have one heck of a sales pitch: The company just pulled in an additional $160 million from Dragoneer Investment Group, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Sofina and Vulcan Capital. Only a few months ago it scored $200 million from existing investors Tiger Global, Accel Partners, Iconiq Capital, and Naspers Group in a deal that valued the firm at $1.5 billion; there’s no word yet how much the new deal will boost that number.
Alfonso Cuarón’s space adventure Gravity debuted this weekend to record-setting box office numbers, as audiences flocked to see the tale of two US astronauts (played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney) who are threatened by a cloud of orbital debris.
China might be the hottest golf market in the world but the prospects were cloudy for a high-profile women’s tournament outside of Beijing this weekend, as heavy smog levels triggered air quality warnings and sent some players scrambling for air filtration masks.
It was a feast for Samsung and famine for HTC on Friday, as the South Korean giant reported record quarterly profits as it solidified its advantage in developing markets, and its smaller Taiwanese rival continued to spiral downwards with its first-ever quarterly loss, with little prospect for improvement.
Brick by brick, Lego is building a new manufacturing and distribution facility in China, whose growing middle class could help the company expand beyond maturing markets in Europe and North America. But the world’s second-largest toy maker is also facing a daunting challenge on par with building a full-scale Lego X-Wing: China is also where a slew of Lego knock-offs and imitations are made and sold.
The Roman Catholic Church hasn’t found usually much common ground in its icy relationship with China and its Communist Party rulers, but are the two secretive institutions moving, albeit unwittingly, closer together? Recent comments by Pope Francis and officials close to Chinese president Xi Jinping that decry the abandonment of moral traditions for the unbridled pursuit of wealth sound eerily similar.
