Science park weathers typhoon
Operations at the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park (新竹科學園區) proceeded smoothly yesterday, despite heavy downpours brought by Typhoon Rananim, a park administration official said.
Yen Tsung-ming (顏宗明), deputy director of the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park Administration, said that operations remained normal and that no incidents were reported, despite the fact that more than 300mm of rain fell in the Hsinchu area on Wednesday.
Yen claimed that companies based at the park will not be troubled by water shortages in the short term thanks to the rainfall brought by the typhoon.
The park is Taiwan's flagship high-tech facility and is widely viewed as the country's "Silicon Valley."
Major reservoirs in Hsinchu County and neighboring Taoyuan County have taken in large amounts of water.
The Paoshan and Yunghoshan reservoirs now hold more than 90 percent of their capacities.
ProMOS elects new chairman
The board of ProMOS Techno-logies Inc (茂德科技), the nation's leading producer of computer memory chips, yesterday elected its current vice chairman, Chen Liang-min (陳良民), to take over from outgoing chairman Hu Hung-chiu (胡洪九), the company said in a statement submitted to the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp.
Hu, who also chairs ProMOS' parent company, Mosel Vitelic Inc (茂矽), offered his resignation at ProMOS amid an investigation about the alleged embezzlement of more than NT$10 billion from Pacific Electric Wire and Cable Co (太平洋電線電纜).
Hu served as a chief financial officer at Pacific Electric between 1988 and 1998.
Keelung harbor ups its tonnage
Keelung harbor handled 8.5 million tonnes of cargo last month, an increase of 6 percent over the same month last year, according to statistics compiled by the Kee-lung Harbor Bureau.
The port handled a total of 178,172 twenty-foot-equivalent unit (TEU) containers, an annual growth of 6.03 percent.
Of these, 81,823 TEUs were for imports, while 76,905 were for exports.
Transshipments amounted to 19,444 TEUs.
In July, outbound and inbound ships made a total of 856 visits to Keelung, an increase of 3.38 percent over the same month last year.
In the first seven months of this year, Keelung harbor dealt with 57.37 million tonnes of cargo, representing a growth of 9.03 percent over the same period last year.
The port handled 1.21 million TEUs from January to July, representing a rise of 6.98 percent over the same period last year.
Inbound and outbound ships made a total of 5,715 visits during the first seven months of the year.
Yulon Motor plans buyback
Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車), which makes Nissan Motor Co cars in Taiwan, said it plans to buy as many as 30 million of its shares in the next two months.
Yulon Motor may pay as much as NT$35 a share, a 19 percent premium to the stock's closing price of NT$29.30 yesterday, the company said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The stock has fallen 27 percent this year, compared with an 8.9 percent decline in the TAIEX.
NT dollar unchanged
The New Taiwan dollar remained unchanged at NT$34.140 against its US counterpart on the Taipei foreign exchange market yesterday.
The turnover stood at US$429 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
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