■ GREEN TECHNOLOGY
ReneSola wins contracts
ReneSola Ltd, the world’s largest recycler of scrap wafers used in solar panels, said it won two contracts to supply 836 megawatts of wafers to two Taiwan-based panel makers. Neo Solar Power Corp (新日光) will buy 434 megawatts of wafers from October through the end of 2013, and Solartech Energy Corp (昇陽光電) will buy 402 megawatts under a contract that began last month and will continue through the end of 2013, Jiashan, China-based ReneSola said on Friday.
■ FOODSTUFFS
Taisugar restricting sales
Taiwan Sugar Corp (Taisugar, 台糖) said on Friday it is restricting sales of the sweetener to prevent hoarding after a surge in demand last month. The limits on wholesale transactions have been in place since Monday, after sales last month rose 36 percent from a year earlier, according a statement on Taisugar’s Web site. Taisugar controls between 60 percent and 70 percent of Taiwan’s sugar market.
■ POSTAL SERVICES
Pos Malaysia bids start
Ekuiti Nasional Bhd and CVC Capital Partners are putting in a joint bid to buy a 32.2 percent stake in Pos Malaysia Bhd from state investment arm Khazanah Nasional Bhd, the Edge newspaper reported, citing people it didn’t identify. The Sapura Group, Scomi Marine Bhd and local businessmen G. Gnanalingam and Loo Hooi Keat are also eyeing the stake in the postal services group, the newspaper said.
■ MEXICO
Second-quarter GDP up 7.6%
Mexico’s economy grew 7.6 percent in the second quarter of this year compared to the same period last year, the largest quarterly jump since the global economic crisis plunged the country into recession. The National Institute for Statistics and Geography reported on Friday that the GDP increase was driven mostly by a 7.8 percent growth in industrial output, a 7.4 percent increase in the service sector and a 4.8 percent climb in agricultural production. In the first quarter, the economy grew by 4.3 percent. Last year, Mexico’s GDP declined by 6.5 percent, the largest contraction in decades.
■ TECHNOLOGY
Argentina shuts ISP
Argentina’s government on Friday ordered the closure of one of the nation’s three leading Internet service providers, demanding that Grupo Clarin immediately inform “each and every one” of its more than 1 million customers that they have 90 days to find new ways of getting online. The order says Grupo Clarin illegally absorbed the Fibertel company through its Cablevision subsidiary in January of last year, because it failed to obtain prior approval from the commerce secretary. Cablevision denied that on Friday, citing a previous approval obtained in 2003, and planned to appeal.
■ UNITED STATES
Regulators shut 8 banks
ShoreBank Corp, the Chicago lender operating under a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) cease-and-desist order for 13 months, and seven other banks were shut by regulators as this year’s bank failures climbed to 118. ShoreBank’s 15 branches, including those in Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit, will open as Urban Partnership Bank, according to statements from the FDIC. Regulators also closed four banks in California, two in Florida and one in Virginia. This year’s bank failures will surpass last year’s total of 140, FDIC Chairperson Sheila Bair said last month.
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained