■TECHNOLOGY
TECRO offers symposiums
The Investment and Trade Office of the Taipei Economic and Cultural and Representative Office (TECRO) said yesterday it would hold two free symposiums on investment and technology related topics in the next two months. The symposiums will be arranged together with several technology associations from the US east coast, TECRO said. The first symposium will be held on Aug. 8 and the second on Sept. 5 at TECRO’s office in New York. Lecturers will include prominent figures in the fields of investment and technology. Four Taiwanese professors will also give lectures. The speakers will discuss the effect of the subprime crisis, conditions on Wall Street and investment strategies to weather the global economic slump, TECRO said in a statement.
■AVIATION
Thai carrier suspends flights
Thailand’s low budget airline One-Two-Go announced yesterday it was suspending its operations for eight weeks, to allow time for financial restructuring. Services will stop from Tuesday until Sept. 15 as the impact of high fuel prices hits the no-frills carrier. “One-Two-Go have been affected by fierce price competition, other surcharges and continued high fuel prices and local political turmoil,” the company statement said. “The airline executive must be prudent and map out a new strategy focusing on its customers,” it said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Downturn gets worse
The economic downturn is worse than previously thought and there is no extra money available for public spending, Finance Minister Alistair Darling said in an interview published yesterday. Darling also told the Times newspaper that taxpayers were at the limit of what they were willing to pay, a day after official data showed a record deficit in public finances and reports that the government might bend its budget rules. “At Christmas most people remained hopeful there would be an improvement by the autumn,” Darling said.
■TOYS
Mattel wins court case
The world’s largest toy maker, Mattel, on Friday won a court case against competitor MGA, maker of the Bratz dolls that have drawn customers away from its classic Barbie dolls. A 10-member federal jury in Riverside, California, ruled that the design for the Bratz, with their modern, urban look and cartoonish large heads and eyes, was conceived by designer Carter Bryant while he was working under contract at Mattel. It found MGA chief executive Isaac Larian interfered with Bryant’s contractual duties, taking Mattel property for MGA’s use. In the next stage of the case, the jury will determine if the dolls themselves infringe on the designs owned by Mattel and award any damages.
■AGRICULTURE
China must increase crops
China, the world’s biggest grower and consumer of grains, must boost crop yields by at least 1 percent a year to ensure the country has enough food to feed its 1.3 billion people, the Chinese Minister of Agriculture Sun Zhengcai (孫政才) said. The country will accelerate introduction of high-yield rice and genetically modified crops, protect farmland and raise rural incomes to retain farming interest, Sun said in a statement on the central government’s Web site on Friday. China’s growing incomes and population are increasing food demand even as more agricultural workers seek higher-paying jobs in cities.
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
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
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the