AVIATION
Dreamliner arrives in Japan
Boeing Co’s 787 landed in Japan early yesterday to start a week-long dress rehearsal with All Nippon Airways Co (ANA), signaling the end is near to a delay of more than three years for the world’s first composite-plastic jet. The Dreamliner, which landed at Tokyo’s Haneda airport, will make test flights on ANA’s normal domestic routes. The exercises will ensure the plane fits into airport parking slots and can use boarding bridges and fuel hoses, airline spokeswoman Megumi Tezuka said. The trip is one of the final validations ahead of the 787’s entry into service as early as next month. Boeing missed the original May 2008 delivery target, stalling its ability to book profit from a model with an average list price of US$202 million and forcing customers to reshuffle their plans.
BANGLADESH
General strike held
A citizens’ group enforced a six-hour general strike in Dhaka yesterday, partially disrupting businesses and transportation, to demand that the government cancel a gas exploration deal with US energy giant ConocoPhillips. Last month, the government signed a production-sharing contract with the company to explore for gas in deep waters of the Bay of Bengal, but the National Committee on Protection of Oil, Gas and Mineral Resources, Power and Ports, says the agreement compromises the national interest. The country currently faces up to 780 million cubic meters of gas shortages each day.
CHINA
Growth target is ‘difficult’
The economic growth target for this year will be “difficult” to achieve, Vice Premier Wang Qishan (王岐山) said in a statement on the government’s Web site yesterday. It is hard to balance the economy and inflation “given complications and uncertainty in the global situation,” Wang told a conference in Hebei Province early this month, the statement said.
BEER
Fosters rejects takeover bid
The head of Australian beer giant Foster’s yesterday said he was not talking with SABMiller about their recent takeover bid, insisting his focus was on improving the business. Foster’s last month rejected an unsolicited A$9.51 billion (US$10 billion) offer from the international brewer, saying it undervalued the company, and chief executive John Pollaers said he was not engaged in further talks. “Our focus right now is just, fundamentally, turning this business around and making sure we realize the full potential of it,” he told ABC television’s Inside Business show. At the time of the offer, SABMiller said the proposal to buy Foster’s was in line with its strategy to create a global spread of businesses and it would continue to pursue discussions.
AUTOMOBILES
Chinese sales could pick up
Automobile sales growth may recover in the second half of the year after a slowdown in the first six months, Xinhua news agency said, citing the deputy head of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers Dong Yang (董揚). Auto consumption could rise from this month to December as liquidity is expected to ease, boosting consumer demand for mid and high-end passenger cars, Xinhua said, quoting Dong. A drop in oil prices and subsidies for -alternative--energy vehicles could also help to boost sales, it said. The rate of vehicle sales growth in the first half will be slower than the 4.2 percent increase during the first five months, Xinhua said, citing the auto association.
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],”
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
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