Starbucks Corp is expanding its campaign of using messages written on coffee cups to inspire US lawmakers to reach a deal and avoid going over the “fiscal cliff” of automatic tax hikes and government spending cuts.
As US President Barack Obama and congressional leaders were in a final effort to reach a budget agreement before the year’s end, Starbucks this week began urging workers in its roughly 120 Washington, DC-area shops to write the words “come together” on customers’ cups.
A spokesman for the world’s largest coffee chain said the company would expand the effort to all US stores, continuing through this week.
Photo: AFP
“Stores from across the country have been asking if they could join in and we have been saying absolutely yes,” Starbucks spokesman Jim Olson said in an e-mail on Friday.
“Based on this unprecedented response, we are inviting all of our partners at US stores to start signing their customers’ cups with Come Together through next Friday,” Olson said.
Starbucks’ cup campaign aims to send a message to sharply divided politicians and serve as a rallying cry for the public in the days leading up to the Jan. 1 deadline to avert harsh across-the-board government spending reductions and tax increases that could send the US economy back into recession.
“We believe the [Washington] DC effort caught on so swiftly because the Come Together message is such a simple and respectful gesture that expresses the optimism that is core to our country’s heritage and to Starbucks mission,” Olson said.
“This is an important moment for Starbucks to use its scale for good and give Come Together an even louder voice — as we move from signing tens of thousands of cups in DC to tens of millions of cups across the US over the course of next week,” he said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the