■ Plastics
Nan Ya teams up with PPG
Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠) plans to team up with PPG Industries Inc of the US to build a NT$3 billion (US$89 million) glass fiber kiln in China, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported, citing Nan Ya executive vice president Wu Chia-chau (吳嘉昭). The plant will have annual capacity of 33,000 tonnes, making it the biggest in the world, supplying the material used in circuit boards of electronic products, the paper said. PPG Industries will provide the technology and Nan Ya will be in charge of production and operations, the paper said. Nan Ya, based in Taipei, is Taiwan's biggest plastics maker. Pittsburgh-based PPG Industries, the world's No. 2 maker of car paint, makes protective coatings, flat glass, fiber glass products and specialty chemicals.
■ Regulation
Halliburton investigated
Halliburton Co said Friday its involvement in a Nigerian gas plant project had become the subject of a formal inquiry by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. French prosecutors are already combing through the details of Halliburton's involvement in the plant, the US oil services group said.The investigation is focused on whether a Halliburton joint venture broke US anti-bribery laws in order to win construction contracts for the gas plant. US Vice President Richard Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive officer between 1995 and 2000. The company is already being investigated by the US government amid allegations it overcharged the military for fuel delivered to Iraq.
■ Economic Policy
Zimbabwe's inflation drops
Zimbabwe's annual inflation rate slowed slightly to 448.8 percent last month from 505 percent the previous month, officials figures showed yesterday. Despite the drop in the rate cited by the state news agency ZIANA, inflation in Zimbabwe remains among the highest in the world. Zimbabwe's inflation peaked in November last year to hit 619.5 percent having leapt some 94 percentage points from the previous month making it the single largest jump since the economy began its slide some three years ago. The government in November last year predicted that the southern African country's inflation rate would hit 700 percent in the first three months of this year before climbing down.
■ Financial Aid
Jordan wants Marshall Plan
Jordan's King Abdullah II wants a program for the Middle East modeled after the Marshall Plan, which is credited with saving postwar Europe from economic and political disarray. In an address Friday to business leaders, the king said he had approached US leaders about such a project before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "The plan is needed now more than ever, to give people hope and offer them an alternative to hate and division," he told 500 people at a hotel in downtown Chicago. "I'm talking about a Marshall Plan, as it were, for the recovery of the Middle East." Abdullah didn't say if the US alone should take part in putting together such a plan, nor did he say how much it might cost. The four-year Marshall Plan cost US$13 billion (about US$100 billion in today's dollars) and helped rebuild Germany as well as 14 other war-damaged European nations after World War II.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”