■ Wind power
China plans offshore plant
China plans to start work next year on a 9 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion) wind power project off the coast of northern Hebei Province to meet energy demand, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing a government official. The plant, the country's first offshore wind power project, will have a generation capacity of 1 million kilowatts, the report said, citing Gao Xihai (高希海), a vice director at Huanghua Port Development Zone (黃驊港開發區). The plant will be built by Guohua Energy Investment Co (國華投資公司) and the development zone, it said. The initial phase of the plant will cost 500 million yuan and may generate 50,000 kilowatts of electricity when it starts operating in the third quarter of next year, Xinhua said. The whole plant is scheduled to be completed by 2020, it said.
■ Semiconductors
TSMC, UMC at full capacity
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) are using all the advanced technology available in their factories to meet demand for their goods, a Chinese-language newspaper in Taipei said. TSMC is benefiting from Microsoft Corp's orders for graphics chips used in Xbox360 game consoles, and UMC has orders from Qualcomm Inc and Freescale Semiconductor Inc, the paper reported, without saying where it got the information. Advanced technology allows the companies to shrink chip sizes to cut costs.
■ Patents
Microsoft to pay settlement
Teknowledge Corp, a company that sells software to the financial services industry, said that Microsoft Corp agreed to pay US$250,000 to settle a patent infringement lawsuit. The settlement resolves a federal lawsuit over technologies that notify computer users of updates on Web pages. Microsoft had countersued Teknowledge claiming infringement of two related patents, Palo Alto, California-based Teknowledge said in a regulatory filing. The two companies "will cross-license the patents at issue," the filing said. Teknowledge had also sued Yahoo! Inc and Time Warner Inc in 2003 over the same patent.
■ Internet
Cisco sees growth in Mexico
Cisco Systems Inc, the world's largest maker of equipment that directs Internet traffic, said it expects to grow as much as 30 percent in Mexico in the next year. Cisco sees Mexico as having growth potential on expectations that companies and government agencies will invest in broadband infrastructure, Carlos Carnevali, Cisco's vice president for Latin America, said. Carnevali estimated there are less than 5 million high-speed Internet connections in Mexico including both fixed telephone lines and cellphones.
■ Automakers
Toyota to raise production
Toyota Motor Corp, Japan's biggest automaker, plans to nearly double production capacity at its plant in South Africa by 2007 as part of a strategy to expand overseas, a newspaper reported yesterday. The plant, operated by the subsidiary Toyota South Africa Motors, will raise its output capacity to 200,000 vehicles a year, from its current level of 110,000 vehicles, the Nihon Keizai said without citing a source. By 2007, the plant is expected to be assembling up to 120,000 of Toyota's IMV series pickups and sport utility vehicles a year. The vehicles will be exported to the European market, the newspaper said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last