BRAZIL
Auto tax increase postponed
The government postponed until next year increases in taxes on the sale of cars and trucks in a bid to stimulate demand for manufactured goods and spur economic growth, the Finance Ministry said on Saturday. Finance Minister Guido Mantega said the government wanted to “avoid the risk of a drop in sales throughout the year.” “The car industry is very important for Brazil’s economy, it accounts for 25 percent of industrial production,” Mantega said on Globo TV. “So, to keep industrial output growing, it is important that the auto industry keeps growing.”
ISRAEL
Offshore gas delivered
The government announced on Saturday it had begun delivering gas from a major northern offshore drill toward its shores, a move officials say will diminish the state’s dependency on foreign gas imports. Tamar, which has reserves of up to 238 billion cubic meters, lies 130km off the Mediterranean port city of Haifa. Tamar, which was discovered in 2009, is jointly owned by US company Nobel Energy and three Israeli firms — Delek, Isramco and Dor Alon.
MINING
Firm welcomes use of yuan
Fortescue Metals Group Ltd, Australia’s third-biggest iron ore producer, said it welcomes policies that promote the use of China’s yuan in global trade, following a report Australia was set to sign a conversion deal.
“Fortescue welcomes the ongoing internationalization of the yuan, which is becoming an increasingly important currency in global trade,” the Perth-based company said yesterday in response to a Bloomberg request for comment.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Court to rule on patent case
The Indian Supreme Court is to rule today on a landmark patent case involving Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG that focuses on demands by major companies that their investments be protected, against Indian companies that say they should be allowed to continue producing cheaper generic versions of many lifesaving medicines. A decision in the seven-year legal battle is keenly awaited by the two most interested parties — big pharma companies and health aid groups — with both sides saying the outcome will set a precedent with far-reaching consequences for the future availability of the drugs.
AUTOMAKERS
Ford dismisses accusations
US automaker Ford, which faces a lawsuit over claims its vehicles accelerate without warning, dismissed the accusations on Saturday as unscientific. Ford said it had addressed the issue with US regulators, whose work is “far more scientific and trustworthy than work done by personal injury lawyers and their paid experts,” an e-mail from a company spokesman said. On Friday, vehicle owners in 14 states filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of “potentially millions of purchasers and lessees of Ford vehicles manufactured between 2002 and 2010.”
CRIME
Investment scam queried
People are questioning how a North Carolina man operated a US$600 million fraudulent investment scheme that attracted 1 million investors, even though regulators had received dozens of complaints about the company. Authorities say Paul Burks is the mastermind of one of the biggest investment scams in US history. His online company ZeekRewards was based in Lexington, North Carolina. Burks has agreed to pay a US$4 million penalty.
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