AFP Asia Business

South Korean chip giant SK hynix reported record quarterly profits Thursday thanks to soaring global demand for artificial intelligence, highlighting the firm’s ability to weather mounting tariff threats.The world’s second-largest memory chip maker dominates the market for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) semiconductors and is a key supplier for US titan Nvidia.SK hynix said it recorded an …

SK hynix posts record profits thanks to strong AI demand Read More »

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday played up prospects of a “fair deal” on trade with China, but his top officials offered few details of how Washington might de-escalate its damaging tariff war with Beijing.Trump told reporters his country would have a “fair deal with China,” adding that “everything’s active” when asked if Washington was …

Trump seeks ‘fair deal’ with China but pathway unclear Read More »

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency called Wednesday on Iran to explain tunnels built around a nuclear site but voiced optimism that US-Iran talks would land a deal.The Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington think tank, released satellite imagery on Wednesday that it said showed a new, deeply buried tunnel alongside an older one around the Natanz site, as well as a new security perimeter.”I’ve been raising this issue repeatedly, and I will continue to do so,” Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told reporters on a visit to Washington.Grossi, who visited Tehran last week, said that all countries need to inform the IAEA of intentions for facilities around nuclear sites but that Iran has a stance “unique in the world” that it does not need to inform the agency ahead of time.”We’re asking them, what is this for? They are telling us, it’s none of your business,” Grossi said.Grossi said it “cannot be excluded” that the tunnels would store undeclared material but said he did not want to speculate on intentions.But Grossi also said that Iranian and IAEA experts would meet to follow up on his visit, including on reinstalling cameras on nuclear sites.”It was agreed that I am sending a technical team to continue our discussions on this very specific kind of things,” he said.”They are going to be meeting in the next few days in Tehran.”- Expectation of new deal -Iran and the United States have held two rounds of talks since President Donald Trump called for a diplomatic solution to avoid conflict. A new round of technical talks is expected this weekend.”I think there’s a general expectation that this goes well and that the agreement is verified by the IAEA,” Grossi said.He said that was “more or less the sense of what I’m getting when I’m talking to leaders,” mentioning specifically Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi as hopeful for a US-Iran deal.Trump in 2018 ripped up an earlier nuclear agreement negotiated under Barack Obama and reimposed sweeping sanctions.But Trump has voiced hope in his second term for a new accord that would resolve the issue diplomatically, and has discouraged Israel from a military strike on Iran.Asked about a military option, Grossi said: “I should simply remind that attacks on nuclear facilities is something that could have potentially very, very serious consequences.”- US talks tough -The Obama deal, known as the JCPOA, allowed Iran to maintain uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent — far below the level needed for nuclear weapons — for civilian nuclear usage.US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood firm in an interview released Wednesday that there should be no enrichment.”If Iran wants a civil nuclear program, they can have one just like many other countries in the world have one, and that is they import enriched material,” he told the Honestly podcast.Rubio said the Trump team would not repeat the Obama deal which “gave Iran immediate and full sanctions relief in exchange for enrichment capabilities that at any point could be weaponized in the future.”Obama administration officials counter that the JCPOA worked in constraining Iran’s program until Trump walked away and that it is unrealistic to expect Iran to surrender its whole program.The Trump administration has kept up sanctions despite the diplomacy. On Tuesday, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on an Iranian shipping network and its purported owner.Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei responded that the move was in “clear contradiction with the United States’ demand for dialogue and negotiation and indicates America’s lack of goodwill and seriousness in this regard.”burs-sct/mlm

Boeing’s CEO confirmed Wednesday that China had stopped accepting new aircraft due to the US-China trade war, as the company’s shares surged following a smaller than expected loss.In a televised interview with CNBC, Boeing Chief Executive Kelly Ortberg said Chinese customers had “stopped taking delivery of aircraft due to the tariff environment,” adding that if …

Boeing says China not accepting planes over US tariffs Read More »

A relief rally swept global equity markets Wednesday as comments by US President Donald Trump that he had “no intention” of firing the head of the Federal Reserve and his signals of possible tariff cuts for China reassured investors.Global markets, already upended by Trump’s trade war, were hit at the start of the week by …

Stocks rally as Trump soothes fears over China trade, Fed Read More »

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday urged Hamas to free all hostages, saying keeping them provided Israel with “excuses” to attack Gaza, as rescuers recovered charred bodies from an Israeli strike.Israeli attacks killed at least 25 people across the besieged territory, while Germany, France and Britain urged Israel to end its aid blockade.Israel’s Gaza military campaign resumed on March 18, ending the ceasefire that had largely paused hostilities and saw the release of 33 hostages in exchange for around 1,800 Palestinian prisoners.Talks on a new ceasefire have so far failed been fruitless, and a Hamas delegation is in Cairo for renewed negotiations with Egyptian and Qatari mediators.”Hamas has given the criminal occupation excuses to commit its crimes in the Gaza Strip, the most prominent being the holding of hostages,” Abbas said in Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.”I’m the one paying the price, our people are paying the price, not Israel. My brother, just hand them over.””Every day there are deaths,” Abbas said.”You sons of dogs, hand over what you have and get us out of this” ordeal, he added, levelling a harsh Arabic epithet at Hamas.Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim called his remarks “insulting”.”Abbas repeatedly and suspiciously lays the blame for the crimes of the occupation and its ongoing aggression on our people,” he said.There have been deep political and ideological divisions between Abbas’s Fatah party and Hamas for nearly two decades.Abbas and the PA have often accused Hamas of undermining Palestinian unity, and Hamas has criticised the former for collaborating with Israel and cracking down on West Bank dissent.- ‘Charred bodies’ -Late Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared Hamas with “Nazis, like Hitler”.”They want to kill, to destroy all the Jews. They openly declare their intent to destroy the Jewish state, and that will not happen!” he said as Israel marked Holocaust Remembrance Day.Hamas’s armed wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades had earlier released footage it said was of an Israeli hostage alive in Gaza. He identified himself as 48-year-old Omri Miran.His family in a statement decried “a moral failure for the State of Israel… We will continue to fight until Omri returns to us.”Israel continued to pound Gaza, with rescuers reporting at least 25 people killed Wednesday, including 11 in a strike on a school-turned-shelter.”The school was housing displaced people. The bombing sparked a massive blaze, and several charred bodies have since been recovered,” civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said of the attack on Yaffa school in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah neighbourhood.Israel’s military said it had “struck a gathering of terrorists operating within a Hamas and Islamic Jihad command and control centre” at the school.An AFP journalist reported seeing several bodies in white shrouds at Al-Shifa hospital’s morgue, where women wept over the body of a child.”We want nothing more than for the war to end, so we can live like people in the rest of the world,” said Khan Yunis resident Walid al-Najjar.- ‘No tools’ to retrieve bodies -Since the war began following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, tens of thousands of displaced Gazans have sought refuge in schools.Aid agencies estimate that the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once.”We lack the necessary tools and equipment to carry out effective rescue operations or recover the bodies of martyrs,” Bassal said.On Tuesday, Israel’s military said it had targeted approximately 40 “engineering vehicles”, alleging they were used for “terror purposes”.Elsewhere in Gaza, further fatalities were reported Wednesday, including four in Israeli shelling of homes in eastern Gaza City, Bassal said.Since Israel’s campaign resumed, at least 1,928 people have been killed in Gaza, bringing the total death toll since the war erupted to at least 51,305, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.Hamas’s attack on Israel that ignited the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.Germany, France, and Britain on Wednesday called on Israel to stop blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza, warning of “an acute risk of starvation, epidemic disease and death”.”We urge Israel to immediately restart a rapid and unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza in order to meet the needs of all civilians,” their foreign ministers said in a joint statement.