AVIATION
US acts on Boeing beacons
US aviation authorities said on Friday they were working “to develop instructions to operators” on how to inspect the emergency beacons suspected of causing a fire on a Boeing Dreamliner last week in London. “After reviewing the initial findings” from Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch, “the Federal Aviation Administration is working with Boeing to develop instructions to operators for inspection of the Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELTs) on Boeing 787 aircraft,” the FAA said in a statement. These inspections will be mandatory and operators will need to check for evidence of “proper wire routing and any signs of wire damage or pinching” in the Honeywell-made beacons.
AUTOMAKERS
Judge to grant Toyota claims
A California judge said on Friday that he was finalizing a settlement worth more than US$1 billion in cases where motorists say the value of their Toyota vehicles plunged after recalls over claims they unexpectedly accelerated. US District Judge James Selna said he was approving the deal that was announced in December and will affect 22 million consumers. Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed against Toyota since 2009, when the Japanese automaker started receiving numerous complaints that its cars accelerated on their own, causing crashes, injuries and even deaths. More than 14 million vehicles have been recalled since the claims surfaced. Toyota has denied the allegations, blaming driver error, faulty floor mats and stuck accelerator pedals for the problems.
BANKING
JPMorgan directors quit
JPMorgan Chase & Co on Friday said two directors who served on the bank’s risk policy committee at the time of its US$6 billion “London whale” trading loss are stepping down from the board. The US’ largest bank said David Cote and Ellen Futter have retired, and it plans to name replacements later this year. Cote, the chairman and CEO of industrial conglomerate Honeywell Inc, and Futter, the president of the American Museum of Natural History, were both re-elected to new terms this year, but they were targeted by activist investors and received diminished support from shareholders. Futter has been on the board for 16 years and Cote has been on the board for five years. They served on the risk policy committee when the bank suffered the surprise trading loss.
SECURITIES
SEC rejects Falcone deal
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected an US$18 million settlement that would have banned billionaire hedge-fund manager Philip Falcone from the securities industry for two years. Falcone and Harbinger Capital Partners were told on Thursday that SEC commissioners voted down the settlement, according to a filing on Friday by parent company Harbinger Group Inc. The SEC’s enforcement staff had proposed the deal in May. The deal sought to settle civil fraud charges by fining Falcone and hedge-fund firm Harbinger Capital US$18 million. The SEC has accused Falcone and the firm of using fund money to pay his taxes and favoring some clients over others. In a lawsuit filed in June last year, the SEC alleged that from 2006 through early 2008, Falcone manipulated the market for high-yield, high-risk bonds issued by a company called Maax Holdings Inc.
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