TRADE
US probes sink imports
The US Department of Commerce on Thursday said it was investigating if imports of stainless steel sinks from China were being sold at unfairly low prices. The department said it was launching the probe in response to a petition from Elkay Manufacturing, an Illinois firm that accuses its Chinese rivals of “dumping” the sinks in the US at below fair market value. The firm is asking for anti-dumping duties ranging from about 23 to 77 percent and for additional countervailing duties to offset alleged Chinese government subsidies. The US imported US$118 million of stainless steel sinks from China last year, up from US$98 million in 2010.
TELECOMS
T-Mobile to shed 1,900 jobs
T-Mobile USA Inc, the US’ fourth-largest wireless service provider, will eliminate 1,900 jobs as it reduces the number of call centers to 17 from 24. T-Mobile has 3,300 employees at the seven call centers scheduled to be closed. The Bellevue, Washington-based company will invite employees from those locations to transfer to some of the 17 other offices, where 1,400 positions are being added, it said in a statement. The company has 36,000 US employees. T-Mobile USA, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, was a target of a takeover bid by AT&T Inc that failed to win regulatory approval. The company will also “restructure and optimize” other parts of the business, according to the statement.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Roche to cut drug prices
Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG plans to offer cut-price versions of two blockbuster cancer drugs for the Indian market soon, a company spokesman said yesterday, days after New Delhi moved to slash the price of a rival cancer treatment. India stripped German’s Bayer AG of its exclusive rights to Nexavar earlier this month and licensed a local drugs company to produce a cheap, generic version, on the grounds that poor Indians could not otherwise afford the drug. Roche, the world’s biggest maker of cancer drugs, said it would offer “significantly” cheaper, locally branded versions of its two cancer drugs, Herceptin and MabThera, by early next year, under an alliance with India’s Emcure Pharmaceuticals Ltd.
TRANSPORT
EU plans extensive network
European transport ministers on Thursday drew up a map of rapid road and rail links across the continent, from Sweden to Italy and Portugal to Paris, that would cost 500 billion euros (US$660 billion) by 2020 if fully implemented. Now that transport ministers have agreed on a broad plan for a core transport network with a 2030 deadline, it will be further debated by the European Parliament and governments over the coming months. The network includes 10 major transport corridors, connecting 86 main European ports, 37 airports and upgrading 15,000km of railway to high speed, as well as 35 cross-border projects to reduce bottlenecks.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Facebook acquires patents
Facebook has acquired patents from IBM as it girds itself for litigation, including a lawsuit by Yahoo. A company spokesman on Thursday confirmed the purchase. Earlier, Bloomberg News said Facebook acquired 750 patents covering technologies dealing with software and networking. It cited a person with knowledge of the transaction who was not named in the report. Last week, Yahoo sued Facebook, saying the latter had infringed on 10 of its patents covering advertising, privacy controls and social networking.
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