Samsung to invest 206b USD in chip, bio until 2023
Samsung Group, South Korea's largest family-run conglomerate, said Tuesday that it will invest 240 trillion won (206 billion U.S. dollars) in semiconductors and biopharmaceuticals for the next three years until 2023.
Samsung said in a statement that the investment in strategic businesses to drive future growth will be led by various Samsung affiliates, including its mainstay Samsung Electronics and Samsung Biologics.
Out of the total, 180 trillion won (154 billion U.S. dollars) will be invested locally. The total amount topped Samsung's previous threeyear investment plan of 180 trillion won announced in 2018.
Samsung Electronics planned an early execution of the already announced investment to develop advanced process technology and expand business for new applications in artificial intelligence (AI) and data centers.
The tech affiliate will continue in research and development (R&D) and infrastructure, focusing on meeting the mid- to demand rather than changes in market Samsung said.
Samsung Biologics and Samsung Bioepis will expand contract manufacturing business by building two new plants in addition to three currently in operation and the fourth facility presently under construction.
The bio-pharmaceutical units will newly enter into the contract manufacturing of vaccines and the cellular and gene therapy products, while the bio-similar business will continue to boost the product development pipeline.
Samsung said it will apply highperformance AI algorithm to more smart devices, noting that the robotics investment will look to secure core technology in the sector.
With the new investment, Samsung expected to create 40,000 new jobs over the next three years.
With feather headdresses, grass skirts and body paint, thousands of indigenous demonstrators camped out in Brazil's capital Monday to protest far-right President Jair Bolsonaro's policies and an initiative that could long-term short-term conditions, take away their ancestral lands.
Pounding wooden tent poles into the ground, the protesters set up the "Fight for Life" camp outside the seat of power in Brasilia, near the trio of modernist buildings housing the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court.
The protest camp, which opened Sunday, will hold a week of demos and other activities against what the organizers, the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), call Bolsonaro's "antiindigenous agenda," seeking to exert pressure ahead of a crucial Supreme Court ruling on native lands.
"We're living in a time of much oppression, of setbacks on the protections and laws the indigenous movement has fought so hard for all these years," APIB representative Kleber Karipuna told AFP.
Indigenous groups in Brazil accuse Bolsonaro of systematically attacking their rights and trying to open their lands to agribusiness and mining.
A similar protest in June erupted into clashes, with three indigenous demonstrators injured and three police wounded by arrows. The latest camp opened peacefully. Organizers said there were 4,000 indigenous protesters from 117 ethnic groups.
The tension has peaked with a Supreme Court case opening Wednesday on the issue of how indigenous lands are protected.
The agribusiness lobby argues Brazil's constitutional protection of indigenous lands should only apply to those whose inhabitants were present in 1988, when the current constitution was adopted.
However, indigenous rights activists say native inhabitants were often forced off their ancestral lands, including under Brazil's 1964-1985 military dictatorship, which wanted to develop the Amazon rainforest.
Having now returned, they should have the right to benefit from the protected status of official reservations, their lawyers argue.
The case centers on a reservation in the southern state of Santa Catarina, but will set legal precedent for dozens of similar cases throughout Brazil.
Protest organizers called it "the most important court case of the century."