EVA to resume Hawaii flights
EVA Airways Corp (長榮) is slated to resume flight services to Hawaii in late June following a hiatus of more than four years, a company spokesman said yesterday.
The service will be provided on a thrice weekly basis on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, from CKS International Airport near Taipei to Honolulu Airport. A one-way trip takes about 10 hours.
EVA will use its new A330-200 planes to ply the route from June 25, providing a new option for domestic travelers wishing to go to the resort islands.
The carrier suspended flights on the Taipei-Hawaii route in September 2000 due to fleet adjustments with openings of many new routes.
Yuanta to complete merger
Yuanta Core Pacific Securities Co (元大京華證券) is planning to complete a merger with Fuhwa Financial Holdings Co (復華金控) by the end of this year and has recommended Yen Ching-chang (顏慶章) to serve as chairman after the merger deal is closed.
Yen, Taiwan's former representative to the WTO, was invited by Yuanta Group chief executive officer Rudy Ma (馬志玲) to head the nation's 12th largest financial service provider, a Chinese-language newspaper reported yesterday.
NT dollar trades lower
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday traded lower against its US counterpart, after traders bought back US dollar as the Chinese central bank dismissed reports of an change to its yuan peg system.
The NT dollar dropped NT$0.052 to close at NT$31.315 on the Taipei foreign exchange market, on turnover of US$557 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