German Minister of Transport Alexander Dobrindt, escalating a months-long feud with Italy over vehicle emissions, said the European Commission must ensure that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV’s cars that break pollution rules are taken off the market, Bild am Sonntag reported.
“The Italian authorities have known for several months that Fiat, in the opinion of our experts, uses illegal shut-off devices,” the Sunday newspaper quoted Dobrindt as saying. “Fiat has so far refused to participate in the clarification” of the matter and the commission “must consequently ensure that a recall is organized for the Fiat vehicles.”
Italian Deputy Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Riccardo Nencini said in a statement on late Friday that the “insistence of the German government after the responses given by the Italian ministry is incomprehensible.”
The Italian government is collaborating with the European Commission, Nencini said after the EU’s executive arm said German authorities have expressed serious concerns on emissions of the Fiat 500x.
Fiat is under investigation by the US Department of Justice over its alleged failure to disclose software that violated emissions standards, according to people familiar with the matter, another legal hurdle for a company already under criminal scrutiny for its sales practices.
The possibility of a criminal action over diesel emissions violations comes after the US Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday last week said that it found software in 104,000 Jeep Grand Cherokees and Ram 1500s that allowed the automaker to exceed pollution limits on the road.
“We have repeatedly asked Italian authorities to come forward with convincing answers as soon as possible,” the European Commission said in an e-mailed statement on Friday.
The commission’s initiative was welcomed by the German transport ministry, with spokeswoman Svenja Friedrich telling reporters on Friday that “the EU Commission is now doing exactly what has been demanded for a long time: It’s talking again with the Italians.”
Germany’s KBA motor vehicle authority has carried out investigations on several Fiat vehicles, Friedrich said at a regular government news conference. “The result was that a considerable reduction of the exhaust gas cleaning function occurs after a certain time. We are still of the opinion that these are unlawful switch-off facilities.”
Under EU rules, Italy is responsible for testing Fiat because the automaker’s regional operations are based in the country.
Italy has always adopted a “severe, transparent” stance on auto emissions, Italian Minister of Transport Graziano Delrio told Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Sunday.
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