China is to halt the implementation of a coding system to identify counterfeit drugs that is developed and operated by Alibaba Health Information Technology Ltd (阿里健康), a company controlled by billionaire Jack Ma’s (馬雲) Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴).
China Food & Drug Administration (FDA) suspended the new electronic coding system as it made draft amendments to existing rules, allowing the use of other methods to build a system that tracks medicines back to their origin, the administration said in a statement published on Saturday.
The company “saw the administration’s statement, but has not yet received notice from China FDA to stop providing technical operation and maintenance services to the supervision network,” Alibaba Health spokeswoman Zhang Lei (張磊) said in a text message yesterday.
While the company, in which Alibaba Group bought a controlling stake in 2014, does not earn any revenue from the Chinese authority at present, the coding system’s earnings potential has been an influential factor for its shares listed in Hong Kong.
The stock plunged 20 percent on Jan. 28 after local media reported China’s drug regulator planned to withdraw the company’s operating rights for the coding system and rebounded 16 percent a day later after Alibaba Health said it had not received any notification from the authority to cease operations.
Alibaba Health’s unit Citic 21CN provides technical and maintenance services to the network, including the identification, authentication and tracking of drugs, it said on Feb. 5.
The company said that although the system has always been owned by the government, the services it provides help to identify counterfeits and resold drugs and deter illegal companies.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
FORESEEABLE CONSEQUENCES: New technology always comes with new innovations by the iniquitous in exploiting users for financial gain or more nefarious ends Artificial intelligence (AI) “agents” say they can save users time and energy by automating tasks, but the growing power of systems such as OpenClaw is putting cybersecurity experts on edge. Powered by a wave of hype, OpenClaw today says it has more than three million users worldwide. The system allows users to create so-called agents, tools based on a large language model (LLM) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic PBC’s Claude, that can carry out online tasks. “We’ve moved from an AI you could talk with via a chatbot to an agentic AI, which can take action... the threat and the risks are
RSS