TRADE
Canada plans meeting
Canada plans to convene a meeting of trade ministers to discuss how to reform the troubled WTO, but the US and China will be left out for now, Joseph Pickerill, a spokesman for Canadian Minister of Trade Jim Carr, said on Friday. The meeting would take place in October in Ottawa, Pickerill said. The ministerial group aims to identify areas at the WTO that can be modernized, he said, adding that Canada has already put forward suggestions on e-commerce, investment protection and accelerating trade with developing nations.
ENTERTAINMENT
Disneyland raises wages
Disneyland has agreed to raise the minimum wage for employees at its California theme park to US$15 an hour. Disneyland Resort announced the 40 percent increase on Thursday and said it will go into effect on Jan. 1 next year. As part of a deal with labor unions, the resort said it will immediately increase the current minimum of US$11 an hour to US$13.25. It will be at US$15.45 in 2020. The deal affects more than 9,700 employees, including those working in attractions, store operations and costuming, among others.
E-COMMERCE
Jury awards IBM US$80m
A US jury on Friday awarded IBM Corp US$83.5 million after finding that Groupon Inc infringed four of its e-commerce patents. The verdict cements the prowess of IBM’s portfolio of more than 45,000 patents and is a boon to its intellectual-property licensing revenue, which brought in US$1.19 billion last year.
RAILWAYS
SNCF rules out job cuts
French state railway monopoly SNCF is not planning compulsory jobs cuts, company chief executive Guillaume Pepy said on Friday after it reported a net loss of 762 million euros (US$888 million) in the first half of the year after being hit by a 37-day strike. SNCF reported first-half sales of 16.1 billion euros, down 3.3 percent compared with the same period a year earlier after the strike by rail workers from April to June over French government reform plans, Pepy said.
FOOD
Tyson deal expected
Tyson Foods Inc is close to acquiring Keystone Foods LLC, a US supplier of chicken nuggets to McDonald’s Corp, according to two people familiar with the matter. Tyson is in exclusive talks with Keystone’s owner, Brazil’s Marfrig Global Foods SA, the people said. Marfrig is seeking to raise more than US$3 billion from the sale of the business, people with knowledge of the matter said in May.
INDUSTRY
Investor opposes breakup
German industrial giant Thyssenkrupp’s biggest shareholder on Friday strongly opposed calls by activist investors to break up the venerable institution as it battles through a leadership crisis. “There will be no break-up of the company on my watch,” Ursula Gather, head of the Krupp Foundation — which has a 21 percent stake in the group — told German news weekly Der Spiegel. “Job security” and “the principles of the social market economy” took precedence over a desire by some to cash in, she said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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
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