IBM plans to invest $83 million to set up a state-of-the-art semiconductor production line in Japan, a report said on Sunday. IBM will install the line at its plant in Yasu in the western Japanese prefecture of Shiga by 2001, the business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported. The move followed a decision by IBM's US rival Texas Instruments Inc to invest up to $420 million in production of integrated chips in Japan, the report said. Texas Instruments' Japan unit will close its plant in Hatogaya, in Tokyo, by next year and transfer production to its Miho plant, north of Tokyo. The Miho plant will be enlarged, with a new eight-inch wafer process line. The firm would invest 40 to 50 billion yen in the plant in the next three to four years.

Seagate gets Compaq supplier award

Seagate Technology Inc has earned the 1998 Compaq supplier partnership award. Seagate earned the honour and endorsement because of its performance in meeting Compaq's goals fortechnology leadership, technology alignment, quality, availability, responsiveness and cost. Seagate provides a breadth of products to Compaq that includes disc drives for desktop PCs, workstations, servers and storage system.

Symantec appoints new president-cum-CEO

Symantec Corporation has announced that John W Thompson, a career executive at IBM, and general manager of IBM Americas, has been appointed president and chief executive officer and will be appointed chairman of the board of directors of Symantec. Carl Carman, Symantec's current chairman, will remain on the board of director.

HCL Insys wins Toshiba award

HCL Infosystems has been awarded the `excellent support company award for its office automation division by the electronic imaging department of Toshiba Singapore Pte Ltd, a subsidiary of the $48-billion Toshiba Corp. Instituted by Toshiba under the `Quality Service Campaign 1998', HCL Insys has been adjudged the first among participating distributors of 29countries.

`Media role during crises crucial'

The role of media in reporting controversies and crises is crucial and it should play its part with objectivity, says noted journalist and Prasar Bharati board member BG Verghese. "Newspapers are the first draft of history. When reporters become crusaders, specially in times of controversy and confrontation, they are guilty of misuse of the freedom of the press," he added. He was delivering a talk on `Editor and Media in the Next Millennium' organised by the CP Ramachandran trust in New Delhi. Taking of sides, editorialising in news columns and use of strong language were all signs of bad journalism. Only weak stories needed strong adjectives, he said. Stating that a newspaper loses its stock-in-trade if it loses its credibility, Verghese said the circulation of a paper was no criteria for its credibility.