AIRLINES
Norwegian grounds plane
Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA says it has grounded one of its new Boeing Co 787 Dreamliners to allow technicians from the US company to “make it more reliable.” Norwegian spokesman Lasse Sandaker-Nielsen said on Saturday that the plane “has not been reliable enough and passengers have been subjected to too many delays.” He declined to detail any of the technical glitches encountered. In the meantime, the Scandinavian low-cost carrier will lease an Airbus SAS A340 to fly on its two new long-haul routes between Stockholm, New York and Bangkok. Norwegian Air Shuttle has ordered eight Dreamliners, but only received two so far.
AUTOMAKERS
Mazda issues US recall
Mazda Motor Corp is recalling 161,400 midsize cars in the US because the doors can open while they are being driven. The recall affects Mazda six car models from 2009 through this year. The company says the door latch mounting screws can loosen, which can stop the doors from latching. If the latches come loose, a door ajar light will warn drivers. Mazda traced the problem to improper tightening at the factory or uneven door surfaces. The company will notify owners and dealers will put on a thread-locking adhesive and tighten the screws. The recall will start sometime next month. Mazda says the problem has not caused any crashes or injuries.
OIL
Key Yemeni pipeline fixed
Yemen’s main oil export pipeline has started working again after damage caused by a bomb attack earlier this month was repaired, security and oil sources said on Saturday. Tribesmen attacked the pipeline in central Maarib Province on Sept. 14 — their fourth assault on it in a month — halting flows to the Ras Isa terminal on the Red Sea. Groups often damage or destroy pipelines to press Sana’a to provide jobs, settle land disputes or free relatives from prison. The impoverished country, which relies on crude exports to finance up to 70 percent of budget spending, is struggling to reassert state control against one of the most active franchises of the al-Qaeda network.
ECONOMY
German inflation beats Spain
Inflation in Germany, the guardian of price stability in the eurozone, is outstripping that of Spain by the widest margin since the creation of the EU’s single currency. Spanish consumer prices rose 0.5 percent this month from a year ago, compared with a 1.6 percent increase in the bloc’s largest economy, according to a EU-harmonized price gauge. The 1.1 percentage-point difference exceeded the 1 point spread that opened between the indices in June 2009, during the first wave of the global financial crisis, according to Germany’s Federal Statistics Institute’s press release on Friday.
FINANCE
CME delays market launch
CME Group Inc, the world’s largest futures exchange, delayed the introduction of its planned London-based market for the second time because of a “technical issue around the delivery of physical currencies.” The company said it is working with UK regulators to gain recognition for the exchange, known as CME Europe, and gave no new start date for the venue, according to a notice to customers obtained by Bloomberg News on Friday. CME said in June that the venue would begin operations on Sept. 9. Earlier this month, it pushed back the date to yesterday.
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