■ TOURISM
Science park does well
The Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學園區) posted NT$100.39 billion (US$3.1 billion) in sales for July and August, the highest level ever recorded by the park for a two-month period, tallies released on Friday showed. The amount marked an increase of 13.26 percent over May and June and a rise of 40.33 percent over the same period last year, park officials said. For the first eight months of this year, turnover topped NT$330 billion, or 63.71 percent of the target set by the park for this year. The officials attributed the performance in July and August to a strong growth momentum in the semiconductor and photonics industries.
PHOTO: AFP
■ DEVELOPMENT
Park's future looks bright
Output at Pingtung Agricultural Biotechnology Park is expected to reach at least NT$18 billion (US$545.5 million) within 10 years, the Ministry of the Interior's Construction and Planning Administration (CPA) said yesterday. CPA officials said the first stage of construction at the park had been completed and estimated that 20 manufacturers would be stationed in the park by the end of this year. Within six years, 120 manufacturers will have entered the park, providing 8,000 jobs and boosting the southern job market, they said. The construction of amenities such as banks, a post office, telecommunications, eateries and supermarkets will be completed in May, they said.
■ HEALTH
FDA clears AIDS drug
A new AIDS treatment made by Merck & Co, the first in a new class of drugs aimed at preventing replication of the virus, has been approved by US regulators, Merck said on Friday. The drug will be available in about two weeks, Merck said. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared Isentress, a pill given twice a day and known generically as raltegravir. An FDA advisory panel recommended approval of the drug last month. It was the first in a new class of HIV treatments called integrase inhibitors that seek to block insertion of HIV genetic material into human DNA.
■ MINING
Japanese firms join efforts
Two Japanese mining firms will invest as much as US$1.7 billion in jointly developing copper production bases in Peru and Chile to secure supplies amid growing demand worldwide, a report said yesterday. Nippon Mining and Metals Co and Mitsui Mining and Smelting Co will build the facilities by 2011 to produce up to 250,000 tonnes of copper ore a year, the Nikkei Shimbun reported. The project will be undertaken by Pan Pacific Copper Co, a joint copper smelting venture set up by the two firms last year. It will be the biggest nonferrous metal mining endeavor by Japanese companies, the report said.
■ AVIATION
AirAsia X sells stakes
Malaysia's first long-haul budget carrier, AirAsia X, will sell a 10 percent stake each to Japan's Orix Group and Bahrain's Perigon Capital for a total of US$75 million, a report said yesterday. The deals are part of a second wave of fundraising for fleet expansion as the airline prepares to launch operations next month by flying to Australia's Gold Coast, the Star newspaper said, quoting unidentified people. Two months ago, billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Group purchased a 20 percent stake in AirAsia X for an estimated US$7.2 million. AirAsia subsequently bought a 20 percent stake in the long haul carrier.
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts