■SHIPPING
Bone fragments found
Malaysian authorities yesterday found bone fragments from two bodies on board a stricken Taiwanese oil tanker that was involved in a collision in the Malacca Strait earlier this week. The MT Formosaproduct Brick (立善輪) caught fire and was seriously damaged on Tuesday after a collision with a Greek-managed bulk carrier in the narrow shipping lane. Nine crew members remain unaccounted for. Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency Director First Admiral Tan Kok Kwee said although search and rescue efforts were still ongoing for the missing crew members, authorities were not holding out much hope.
■ELECTRONICS
Firm builds a thinner fan
A Kaohsiung-based company has earned a silver award at the 2009 National Invention and Creation contest for developing the world’s thinnest fan to cool down electronic gadgets. The fan, with a thickness of only 3mm, is nearly half as thick as the 5mm regular mini fans, and is one 1mm thinner than the thinnest fan of 4mm produced by a Japanese company. Founded in 1980, Sunon Group (建準電機) has patented its invention, which can be installed in small spaces in electronic products and propel strong air currents through its blades.
■CHINA
Twelve million jobs needed
China can create 12 million jobs this year, about half the number needed should the economy hit an 8 percent growth target, a government official said in an online statement on Friday. The shortfall of 12 million jobs will be larger than last year, according to Yin Weimin (尹蔚民), minister of Human Resources and Social Security. He didn’t provide a comparative number. New university graduates, workers from the countryside and low-income city residents have the biggest difficulty in landing jobs, Yin said. Opportunities at export-oriented companies have plunged because of the international financial crisis, he said.
■AUTOMOBILES
Honda to sell electric cars
Japan’s Honda Motor Co plans to sell electric vehicles in the US early next decade to meet growing demand there for environmentally friendly cars, a newspaper reported yesterday. Honda, which has so far focused on hybrid vehicles, is now developing at least one prototype of an electric vehicle to be unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show in October, the Nikkei Shimbun business daily said. The move comes after its domestic rivals — Toyota Motor Corp and Nissan Motor Co — announced similar plans.
■AUTOMOBILES
VW assembly bid hits hurdle
Negotiations to assemble Volkswagen cars in Malaysia have ground to a halt, the Edge newspaper reported, citing unidentified sources. Discussions between Germany-based Volkswagen AG and DRB-Hicom Bhd, a Malaysian auto and construction group, ran into difficulty about three weeks ago following interference from certain unnamed government-linked bodies, the newspaper quoted unidentified officials as saying.
■INTERNET
Facebook supports tweets
Facebook on Friday said it is letting celebrities, businesses and others with public pages at the social-networking hotspot instantly turn status updates into tweets at Twitter. In coming days, Facebook will release software enabling managers of public pages to route updates automatically to the micro-blogging service.
BIG BUCKS: Chairman Wei is expected to receive NT$34.12 million on a proposed NT$5 cash dividend plan, while the National Development Fund would get NT$8.27 billion Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday announced that its board of directors approved US$15.25 billion in capital appropriations for long-term expansion to meet growing demand. The funds are to be used for installing advanced technology and packaging capacity, expanding mature and specialty technology, and constructing fabs with facility systems, TSMC said in a statement. The board also approved a proposal to distribute a NT$5 cash dividend per share, based on first-quarter earnings per share of NT$13.94, it said. That surpasses the NT$4.50 dividend for the fourth quarter of last year. TSMC has said that while it is eager
‘IMMENSE SWAY’: The top 50 companies, based on market cap, shape everything from technology to consumer trends, advisory firm Visual Capitalist said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) was ranked the 10th-most valuable company globally this year, market information advisory firm Visual Capitalist said. TSMC sat on a market cap of about US$915 billion as of Monday last week, making it the 10th-most valuable company in the world and No. 1 in Asia, the publisher said in its “50 Most Valuable Companies in the World” list. Visual Capitalist described TSMC as the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry operator that rolls out chips for major tech names such as US consumer electronics brand Apple Inc, and artificial intelligence (AI) chip designers Nvidia Corp and Advanced
Saudi Arabian Oil Co (Aramco), the Saudi state-owned oil giant, yesterday posted first-quarter profits of US$26 billion, down 4.6 percent from the prior year as falling global oil prices undermine the kingdom’s multitrillion-dollar development plans. Aramco had revenues of US$108.1 billion over the quarter, the company reported in a filing on Riyadh’s Tadawul stock exchange. The company saw US$107.2 billion in revenues and profits of US$27.2 billion for the same period last year. Saudi Arabia has promised to invest US$600 billion in the US over the course of US President Donald Trump’s second term. Trump, who is set to touch
SKEPTICAL: An economist said it is possible US and Chinese officials would walk away from the meeting saying talks were productive, without reducing tariffs at all US President Donald Trump hailed a “total reset” in US-China trade relations, ahead of a second day of talks yesterday between top officials from Washington and Beijing aimed at de-escalating trade tensions sparked by his aggressive tariff rollout. In a Truth Social post early yesterday, Trump praised the “very good” discussions and deemed them “a total reset negotiated in a friendly, but constructive, manner.” The second day of closed-door meetings between US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) were due to restart yesterday morning, said a person familiar
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