■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.
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose to No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) at 348th, Pegatron Corp (和碩) at 461st, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) at 494th and Wistron Corp (緯創) at
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
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