EVA, ANA expand code-sharing
EVA Airways (長榮航空), Taiwan's leading international carrier, said yesterday it had expanded code-sharing cooperation with Japan's All Nippon Airways (ANA) starting on Sunday.
The two airliners have added Taipei-Sendai and Taipei-Sapporo flights in joint services after code-sharing on the Taipei-Fukuoka, Taipei-Osaka, Taipei-Tokyo and Taipei-Nagoya routes, an EVA Air spokesman said.
The Taiwanese carrier offers seven flights to Sapporo and two flights to Sendai every week.
Chung Chin quits Sogo
Pacific Sogo Department Store (太平洋崇光百貨), the nation's second-largest department store operator, yesterday confirmed that chairwoman Chung Chin (鍾琴) tendered her resignation last week even though her second three-year term does not expire until 2009. Her successor will be announced at a board meeting to be held soon, vice president Alex Ro (羅仕清) said.
The change would not have a major impact on operations as professional managers play a more important role in implementing the firm's policies, he added.
Chung, former head of the Government Information Office, became Pacific Sogo's first chairwoman in 2003. It was rumored that her political ties with the Democratic Progressive Party government secured her the job.
Bayer acquires Ure-Tech
Bayer AG, Germany's largest drugmaker, completed its acquisition of Taiwan Ure-Tech Group (優得集團), making Bayer the world's largest supplier of resins and films. The company plans to move the global headquarters of its thermoplastic polyurethane unit to Hong Kong by October, the Leverkusen, Germany-based company said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
IBM, institute launch center
IBM Taiwan Corp and the state-funded Institute for Information Industry (資策會) launched the nation's first SOA (service-oriented architecture) innovation center yesterday, hoping to advance the software industry to an international standard. The center evolved from the IBM Open Partner Center that was set up in 2005 to assist IBM's local clients, Sophia Tong (童至祥), general manager of IBM Taiwan, said at the launch.
IBM leads the SOA market with a 53 percent global market share and more than 300 patents in SOA software applications, Tong said.
After joining forces with the institute, the center would accelerate the application of and research in SOA solutions, including electronic payment systems, Web 2.0 software and e-learning, healthcare programs and intelligent virtual stores, she said.
Other than 30 engineers at the center, 200 IBM technicians will support the operation, said Jason Chen (陳永生), an executive of IBM Taiwan's software group. Chen declined to reveal the level of investment in the center.
NT dollar falls
The New Taiwan dollar weakened, reversing appreciation that had sent it to its highest level in almost six months, on speculation investors would buy the US currency to invest abroad for higher returns. Local bonds declined.
The NT dollar dropped 0.1 percent to NT$32.765 against the US currency at the 4pm close of onshore trading, after touching NT$32.625, the highest since Jan. 11, according to Taipei Forex Inc.
"There is still demand to buy the US dollar because of fund outflows," said Sadaaki Kondou, assistant general manager of treasury at Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd in Taipei.
Taiwan's currency also fell on speculation that oil companies are demanding more US dollars as crude prices trade near a 10-month high.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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