RETAIL
China detains Husi workers
Chinese police yesterday detained five people from Shanghai Husi Food Co (上海福喜食品), a unit of US food supplier OSI Group, a statement said, in a case involving expired meat sold to fast food giants including McDonald’s and KFC. The Shanghai Public Security Bureau said the five included the company officials responsible. It said a quality manager was among them but did not name the five. Shanghai authorities on Sunday shut an OSI plant for mixing out-of-date meat with fresh product, relabeling expired goods and other quality problems, following an investigative report by a television station.
MACROECONOMICS
Australia inflation rises
Australian inflation rose 0.5 percent in the three months to June, new figures showed yesterday, giving the country’s central bank room to keep interest rates at a record-low to support the economy. The consumer price index had lifted 0.6 percent in the previous quarter, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said. The latest figures took the annual rate of inflation to 3 percent, up from 2.9 percent in the year to March.
MACROECONOMICS
Hungary cuts interest rates
Hungary’s central bank, MNB, cut its main interest rate to a record low of 2.1 percent on Tuesday, ending a two-year-long monetary easing cycle aimed at stoking economic growth. MNB Governor Gyorgy Matolcsy later told journalists the loosening cycle — begun in August 2012 when the rate was 7 percent — was one of the “longest and deepest cuts in modern history.” Matolcsy said the monetary easing was both helped and made possible by a “turnaround” in the Hungarian economy, the most indebted in emerging Europe.
AUTOMAKERS
Chrysler to recall SUVs
Chrysler Group LLC on Tuesday said it would recall up to 792,300 sport utility vehicles (SUV) to fix an ignition-switch problem, the same part involved in the massive General Motors Co recall. The automaker took the move because ignition keys can be moved unintentionally from the “on” position, causing engine stall, reducing braking power and potentially disabling frontal airbags. Chrysler said the switch might be shifted by an “outside” force, often the driver’s knee. The recall affects certain models of the 2006 to 2007 Jeep Commander and 2005 to 2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee vehicles.
INTERNET
Google tried to buy Spotify
Internet titan Google last year tried to buy music-streaming service Spotify, but backed off for reasons including a huge price tag, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. The Journal cited an unnamed source as saying that Sweden-based Spotify was asking for more than US$10 billion despite being valued at about US$4 billion in its latest round of equity funding. Spotify is the world’s leading service for streaming music on the Internet.
MANUFACTURING
LG Display earnings surge
LG Display Co says its earnings for the April to June quarter more than doubled due to demand for ultra-high-definition TVs. The South Korean display-panel maker said on Wednesday its net income reached 256 billion won (US$250 million), compared with 105 billion won a year earlier. The panel supplier for Apple Inc said higher demand for ultra-high-definition TVs during the FIFA World Cup increased panel shipments.
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