1 Profits tumble at Intel, IBM (BBC) Two
tech titans, IBM and Intel, have reported big drops in net income. Intel
reported a second-quarter profit of $2bn, down 29% from a year ago. For its
part, IBM saw earnings for the same period fall 17% to $3.23bn. Revenue for
both companies slipped as well, with IBM's falling by 3% and Intel's down 5%.
Chipmaker Intel suffered as consumers
and businesses switched away from traditional computers, while IBM made less on
hardware and more on software. Last quarter, IBM's revenues and profit fell
short of analysts' forecasts for the first time in eight years. As a result,
the world's largest computer company slashed jobs and pivoted to focus on data
analysis and cloud computing in an effort to stabilise its business.
More than 3,300 workers were cut from
its ranks, and management at the top was changed. The company has now upped its
forecast for the rest of the year, while its April-to-June figures beat
expectations. IBM is unaffected by the global slide in sales of traditional
personal computers, since it sold that division of its business to China's
Lenovo for $1.75bn in 2005.
For Intel - the world's largest
semiconductor manufacturer - the picture is not as rosy. After initially
assuring investors that the outlook for the rest of the year would be bright,
the company has now slashed its expectations in the wake of declining PC sales.
According to market research firm Gartner, global PC shipments fell 10.9% to 76
million in the second quarter. This is the fourth straight quarter of declining
sales for the company.
2 After Posco, ArcelorMittal scraps
India project (BBC) The world's largest steel company, ArcelorMittal, says it
has abandoned plans to build a steel plant in eastern India because of problems
acquiring land. Initially agreed in 2006, the company was to manufacture 12
million tonnes of steel a year in Orissa state. But farmers who oppose the
purchase of their land have protested.
The move comes a day after Korea's Posco
scrapped a $5.3bn plan for a steel plant in southern India. The company said it
was still pursuing two other projects in Jharkhand and Karnataka states. Farmers
complain that they are being forced to sell land at below market rate.
3 Taliban to Malala: This is why we
tried to kill you (Saba Imtiaz in The Guardian) A senior member of the
Pakistani Taliban has written an open letter to Malala Yousafzai – the teenager
shot in the head as she rode home on a school bus – expressing regret that he
didn't warn her before the attack, but claiming that she was targeted for maligning
the insurgents.
Adnan Rasheed, who was convicted for his
role in a 2003 assassination attempt on the country's then-president Pervez
Musharraf, did not apologise for the attack, which left Malala gravely wounded,
but said he found it shocking. "I wished it would never happened [sic] and
I had advised you before," he wrote.
Malala was 15 when she and two
classmates were targeted by a masked gunman who picked them out on a school bus
as they went home from school in Pakistan's northwest Swat valley last October.
Last week, she celebrated her 16th birthday by delivering a defiant speech at
the United Nations in New York, in which she called on world leaders to provide
free schooling for all children.
In the letter, Rasheed claimed that
Malala was not targeted for her efforts to promote education, but because the
Taliban believed she was running a "smearing campaign" against it. "You
have said in your speech yesterday that pen is mightier than sword,"
Rasheed wrote, referring to Malala's UN speech, "so they attacked you for
your sword not for your books or school."
Rasheed – a former member of Pakistan's
air force, who was among 300 prisoners to escape jail in April last year –
advises Malala to return to Pakistan, join a female Islamic seminary and
advocate the cause of Islam.
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