■ Tourism
CKS passengers climb
The number of inbound and outbound passengers at CKS International Airport broke the 20,000-mark Friday for the first time since April when SARS was prevalent in Taiwan. According to official tallies, CKS airport -- Taiwan's main gateway -- served a total of 22,331 passengers Friday, with 9,323 arrivals and 13,008 departures. The average occupancy rate of airplanes leaving or arriving CKS Airport also reached 124.06 persons, up 17.54 persons from a day earlier. The number of passengers going through the airport began to decline after SARS gripped the island in mid-March and the downward trend was aggravated late that month when a temperature-taking requirement was first imposed on all incoming passengers. The decline became even steeper after arriving passengers from SARS-affected areas were required to undergo 10-day home quarantine in mid-April.
■ Aviation
Rolls Royce to cut jobs
Jet engine maker Rolls-Royce Corp plans to cut 520 jobs this year through voluntary resignations or layoffs, the company said. With comm-ercial engine orders down 18 percent since 2001, the company will trim 11.8 percent of its 4,400 hourly and salaried positions, officials said Thursday. Most of the cuts are expected in July and August. Commercial airlines have cut orders, hammering the company in Indianapolis. Orders from the military have remained steady, accounting for about 40 percent of the plant's US$1.3 billion in annual sales. "After [the attacks of] Sept. 11 we waited for the rebound to happen in the airline industry, and it just never did," said spokesman John Brown. The company delivered 685 commercial engines in 2001 but has orders in hand for only 561 this year, Brown said. Similar volumes are projected over the next two years.
■ Policy
S Korea cuts Russian debt
South Korea agreed Friday to cut Russia's US$2.2 billion Soviet-era debt by US$500 million and agreed to new terms on the remaining amount, a Russian deputy finance minister said. The first US$300 million of the remaining US$1.6 billion in debt is to be returned by 2006 in the form of military goods and the rest must be repaid by 2025, either in installments of cash or other goods, the Interfax news agency quoted Sergei Kolotukhin as saying. Kolotukhin said the terms agreed to by South Korea are better for Russia than those offered by the Paris and London clubs, groups of creditor nations that seek ways for debtor nations to make good on their payments.
■ Aviation
Boeing cuts 860 workers
About 860 workers spent their last day on the Boeing payroll, and the company handed out 60-day layoff notices to another 845 employees. The scheduled job cuts came as Washington and other states submitted bids for the proposed Boeing 7E7 jetliner assembly plant, which would employ an estimated 1,200 workers. Those leaving the payroll were notified of the layoffs April 18. They include about 630 employees from the Puget Sound area. Most of the new layoff notices were being issued to workers in Boeing's Commercial Airplanes division, Boeing spokesman Bill Cogswell said. The rest were employees in the company's support division, Shared Services, and other Boeing businesses, he said. So far, Boeing has cut 33,890 jobs under a payroll reduction plan that started in December 2001. The latest round will bring the company close to its initial target of cutting 35,000 jobs.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure