ENERGY
IRENA touts renewables
Renewable energy will account for 40 percent of electricity output capacity by 2030, almost double today’s market share, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). The expansion will be due to lower technology costs, IRENA director-general Adnan Amin said in an interview on Bloomberg TV in Dubai. “We anticipate with the lower technology cost, by 2030 we’re going to have renewables capacity in the global power system at around 40 percent, which is quite remarkable growth,” he said. That compares with 22 percent today, according to IRENA. The real challenge for renewables is capturing crude oil’s market share in heating, cooling and transportation products, Amin said. “As far as the power sector is concerned, oil plays a very little role in power generation worldwide” at about 5 percent, he said. Electricity from solar energy is getting a boost as the price of solar power has declined.
IRAN
Social media deadline set
The government has set a one-year deadline for foreign social media to hand over data on their local users, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) said yesterday. It said the decision was taken on Saturday at a meeting of a committee on the use of cyberspace headed by President Hassan Rouhani that serves as an IT regulator. “Foreign social media active in the country must transfer to Iran all the data they hold on Iranian citizens” within a year, IRNA said. The measure is set to particularly affect Telegram, an instant messaging app with more than 20 million users in the Islamic republic, a country of 80 million people. IRNA said the committee had also decided to work to develop homegrown social media to compete with foreign networks.
AIRLINES
Lufthansa halts in Venezuela
German airline Deutsche Lufthansa AG on Saturday said it would temporarily suspend flights to Venezuela as of next month due to economic difficulties in the South American nation and problems converting local currency into dollars. International airlines have for years struggled to repatriate billions of dollars in revenue held in the local bolivar currency due to exchange controls, prompting many to limit service and require that passengers pay fares in dollars. The company said demand for international flights to Caracas dropped last year and the first quarter of this year. Lufthansa does not plan to shut its office in Caracas. American Airlines in March said it was scrapping a recently reinstated direct flight between Caracas and New York due to low demand.
PHARMACEUTICALS
India’s Sun probed by US
Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, India’s largest drugmaker, said its US unit received a grand jury subpoena from the US Department of Justice’s antitrust division related to generic products and pricing. The summons also sought documents about communications with competitors and others regarding the sale of generic drugs, along with corporate and employee records, Sun Pharma said in a stock exchange filing on Friday. There has been public outcry in the US and congressional scrutiny over price increases for prescription drugs, including many older, off-patent medications, that are putting them out of reach for many patients. At a Senate hearing in March, Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, called jacking up drug prices a “sick game” in announcing a bipartisan investigation into pharmaceutical drug pricing.
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