A Chinese shipbuilding company has broken ground on what it says will be the world's biggest shipyard, a high-tech facility capable of producing cruise ships and natural gas tankers, official newspapers reported yesterday.
The yard, being built on an island at the mouth of the Yangtze river, will feature seven construction docks along an 8km stretch of coastline, the Shanghai Daily reported.
When completed in 2015, the yard will be able to produce a total of 12 million dead weight tonnes of ships per year, the report said, a figure potentially representing dozens of vessels. A dead weight tonne refers to the maximum amount of tonnes of cargo a ship is able to carry. The largest oil tankers weigh in at about 500,000 dead weight tonnes.
Hyundai Heavy Industries currently operates the world's largest shipyard, Hyundai Shipyard, in the city of Ulsan in South Korea, which is the top ship producer, followed by Japan. China is the third largest, with about 8 percent of global market share, Shanghai Daily said.
The new yard is being built by the China State Shipbuilding Corp, which incorporates 25 large and medium-sized shipyards. The group currently produces tankers and container ships, as well as warships and submarines for China's navy, according to its Web site.
At least two of the group's subsidiaries will move to the new yard from their present locations.
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],”
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
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