Paraguay beef still banned
New Council of Agriculture Chair-man Lee Chin-lung (李金龍) yesterday said Paraguayan beef imports are still banned because the nation remains a foot-and-mouth disease-infected (FMD) country. Imports of Paraguayan beef have been banned since Nov. 4 due to reports of the disease there.
Lee said several livestock experts have been sent to Paraguay to investigate the situation, but the government still concerned about the epidemic.
A 1997 FMD epidemic in Taiwan caused heavy losses to the pork industry with more than half of the nation's estimated 7 million pigs slaughtered.
Taiwan remains an internationally-recognized foot-and-mouth epidemic area, but there has not been a single case of the disease reported in the past 21 months, said Lee.
Lee was formerly the director of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine.
Flat-panel makers boost output
Domestic makers of flat-panel displays used in personal computers expect to return to full production capacity this month as lower prices strengthen demand, a local Chinese-language newspaper reported, citing company officials.
AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美光電) and Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (中華映管), which make 15-inch and 17-inch screens used in notebook computers and desktop monitors, expect capacity use to rebound to about 100 percent from an average of 80 percent in October, the newspaper said.
AU Optronics has eliminated most of its inventory on the expectation that prices of materials and production costs will continue to fall, the report said, citing company vice president Hsiung Hui (熊暉).
Investment seminar opens
More than 500 overseas Chinese businessmen from 37 countries are attending a five-day meeting on trade opportunities and business cooperation that opened yesterday at the Taipei International Con-vention Center.
The bi-annual conference, spon-sored by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission and organized by the China External Trade Development Council (CETRA), will present three keynote speeches, beginning today, by Wu Rong-i (吳榮義), director of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research; Ho Mei-yueh (何美玥), vice chairman of the Council for Economic Planning and Development; and Vice Economics Minister Shih Yen-hsiang (施顏祥).
Between 1952 and 2001, overseas Chinese invested US$3.857 billion in 2,768 projects, but the amount of overseas Chinese investment has declined in recent years, CETRA's Secretary-General Chao Yung-chuan (趙永全) said.
China Petroleum cancels tender
Chinese Petroleum Corp (中油) said it has canceled a tender to buy as much as 2 million barrels of crude oil from the Middle East, Russia and Africa for January loading because offers received were at too high a price.
Of the four offers received, the grade of crude oil was also of poor quality, a company official said.
The refiner on Nov. 25 sought 500,000 to 2 million barrels of Oman, Basrah Light, Masila, Arabian Medium, Urals, Mandji and Ceiba grade crude oil. These grades, known as sour crude oil, have 0.5 percent or more sulfur by weight.
Chinese Petroleum issued a tender a day later to buy crude oil from West Africa and Asia for loading in January but it has yet to be awarded, the company said.
NT$ falls on back of weak yen
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday fell against its US counterpart on the back of weak yen. The local unit dropped NT$0.026 to close at NT$34.838 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$364 million, compared with last Friday's US$320 million.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained