■ Airlines apply for festival routes
Six domestic airlines have applied to conduct 24 cross-strait charter flights between Sept. 29 and Oct. 8 for the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said yesterday.
This year's Mid-Autumn Festival falls on Oct. 6, and cross-strait flights will be offered between Sept. 29 and Oct. 13, the officials said.
Among the 24 flights, 16 will be offered between Taipei and Shanghai, four will go to Beijing and four to Xiamen.
EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空), Trans Asia Airways (復興航空) and Far East Air Transport (遠東航空) have applied to fly to and from Shanghai, while China Airlines (華航) and Mandarin Airlines (華信航空) have applied to fly to and from both Shanghai and Beijing.
UNI Airways (立榮航空) has applied to fly to and from Xiamen. No airline has applied to fly to Guangzhou, CAA officials said.
■ KMT to hold forums in China
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is scheduled to hold forums in China next month on improving the protection of Taiwanese investors on the mainland, a KMT official said yesterday.
A delegation led by KMT vice chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) will holds talks with representatives from Taiwan's investor associations on between Sept. 15 and Sept. 16 in Chengdu in Sichuan Province.
Between Sept. 17 and Sept. 18 in Beijing, the delegates will exchange views with more Taiwanese businessmen and hold discussions with Chinese authorities.
"The [September] forum will be the second of its kind, focusing on protection of Taiwanese investors there," said Kao Koong-lian (高孔廉), a research fellow at with the KMT's National Policy Foundation (國家政策研究基金會).
■ CPC, Taipower post deficits
State-run Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC, 中油) and Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) reported deficits for the first seven months of this year, posting a combined NT$34.43 billion loss in the period, according to the State-owned Enterprise Commission's statistics.
As a result of soaring crude prices, CPC lost NT$22.4 billion in the January-July period, while Taipower had a NT$14.7 billion loss for that period, the statistics showed.
Taiwan Sugar Corp (台糖) reported pre-tax earnings of NT$1.5 billion, the highest among the six state-run companies, the commission said.
China Shipbuilding Corp (中船) posted pre-tax earnings of NT$573 million, or 201.05 percent of the target, followed by Taiwan Water Corp (台灣自來水公司) that with NT$241 millio, it said.
■ Angkor Airways to begin flights
Angkor Airways, a Cambodian carrier, will soon launch flights between Taiwan and China using Phnom Penh as a transit point, the airline said.
Beginning Sept. 7, Angkor will fly three times each week between Taipei and Chengdu, airline official Thomas Chang (張凱堯) said.
Angkor Airways hopes to cash in on the growing market for travel between Taiwan and China, with the new flights offer passengers an alternative route, he said.
Angkor's flights could later be extended to other Chinese cities, including Chongqing in Sichuan Province and Kunming in Yunnan Province, Chang said.
■ New Taiwan dollar weakens
The New Taiwan dollar weakened against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, gaining NT$0.023 to close at NT$32.690.
A total of US$817 million changed hands during the day's trading.
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