■ AVIATION
Mandarin Air leases jets
Taiwan’s Mandarin Airlines (華信航空) has leased eight large aircraft from Brazilian aircraft maker Embraer to operate tourist charter flights across the Taiwan Strait, a newspaper said yesterday. The China Times quoted Mandarin Airlines President Harris Wang (王華宇) as saying that Mandarin Airlines has leased eight E-190/195 jets from Embraer to replace its outdated Fokker-50 and Fokker-100s. E-190 and E-195 can seat 108 and 120 passengers respectively. Mandarin Airlines chose them because they are spacious and can be flown by pilots licensed to fly Boeing jets, Wang said.
■ AUTOMOBILES
Ssangyong denies illegality
Ssangyong Motor Co, controlled by China’s SAIC Motor Corp (上海汽車), denied allegations it illegally leaked technology to the Chinese automaker. Ssangyong Motor confirmed that its head office in Pyeongtaek, 70km south of Seoul, was raided on Friday. MoneyToday reported on Friday that prosecutors raided Ssangyong Motor as part of an investigation into whether SAIC Motor obtained hybrid technology from Ssangyong using unlawful means. “The report is not true,” Ssangyong Motor said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. SAIC Motor’s hybrid technology is more developed than that of Ssangyong Motor and it is even considering seeking a technology transfer from SAIC Motor, the Korean company said.
■ FINANCE
Goldman forecasts drops
The US investment bank Goldman Sachs has lowered its forecasts for this year to 2010 for more than 40 European banks, warning on Friday that some of them may have to raise between 60 billion euros (US$94 billion) and 90 billion euros to shore up finances in the face of a nearly year-long credit crisis. Goldman Sachs analysts said in a note that European banks under their scrutiny had sustained asset write-downs of US$134 billion, offset by capital increases of about US$115 billion. “We believe that regulatory pressures and a sharp turn in the European credit cycle are the two main causes for concern for bank investors,” Goldman analysts said.
■ ENERGY
Efficient building underway
Renovations to a research institute will turn the facility into Singapore’s first zero-energy building, news reports said yesterday. Officials plan to cover the government-run BCA Academy with half a football field’s worth of solar panels. “Hopefully, with a little help from heaven, there won’t be too many rainy days,” the Straits Times quoted National University of Singapore Professor Lee Siew Eang (李修賢) as saying. The ultra-efficient institute is scheduled for completion next year, at the forefront of a drive to reduce power consumption and cut greenhouse gas emissions in the city-state.
■ RESEARCH
ITRI marks 35th year
The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) held a ceremony yesterday to mark the 35th anniversary of its founding, with Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) attending the event. Speaking at the gathering, Yiin lauded the ITRI for its contribution to Taiwan’s economic development over the past several decades and expressed the hope that the institute would work to “blend humanity and technology” in the future to become an “institute of wisdom” focusing its concerns on citizens, society and the environment, as well as industry.
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
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
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],”
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