AVIATION
Boeing faces new lawsuit
Boeing Co’s legal troubles grew on Tuesday, as a new lawsuit accused the company of defrauding shareholders by concealing safety deficiencies in its 737 Max planes. The proposed class action filed in Chicago federal court seeks damages for alleged securities fraud contraventions, after Boeing’s market value tumbled by US$34 billion within two weeks of the March 10 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg and chief financial officer Gregory Smith were named as defendants. The complaint said that Boeing “effectively put profitability and growth ahead of airplane safety and honesty” by rushing the 737 Max to market to compete with Airbus SE, while leaving out “extra” or “optional” features designed to prevent crashes. It also said that Boeing’s statements about its growth prospects and the 737 Max were undermined by its alleged conflict of interest from retaining broad authority from federal regulators to assess the plane’s safety.
UNITED STATES
FAA to license drone airline
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) expects to award the first license to operate a drone airline in the next month, an official at the regulator said yesterday. The agency last year decided that large-scale commercial package delivery operations by drones would need to meet the same safety and economic certification standards as other licensed airlines. An official declined to name the partner, but to date, the only air carrier certificate application for a drone carrier listed on a US government Web site has come from Wing Aviation LLC, a subsidiary of Google’s parent, Alphabet Inc.
CANADA
US tariff list could grow
The country is considering adding to its list of retaliatory tariffs to crank up pressure on Washington to drop aluminum and steel levies, Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland said on Tuesday. “We are looking at ... ways we can refresh the retaliation list to have an even greater impact,” Freeland told reporters in Ottawa. In July last year, Canada hit back at Washington with retaliatory tariffs on C$16.6 billion (US$12.46 billion) of US goods, including orange juice, ketchup and bourbon. This followed US President Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on imports of steel products and 10 percent on aluminum. Ambassador to the US David MacNaughton reportedly told agriculture journalists in Washington on Monday that a “significant number” of US agricultural products, such as apples, pork and wine, could make the updated list.
AUTOMAKERS
S Africa to produce Navara
The South African arm of Nissan plans to spend 3 billion rands (US$214.62 million) equipping its local plant to build the Japanese automaker’s new Navara model, Nissan South Africa managing director Mike Whitfield said yesterday. Capacity at Nissan’s plant in Rosslyn, near Pretoria, would increase by 30,000 units in the first phase, Whitfield said, adding that the plant’s permanent headcount would increase by 400. While production operations elsewhere would also build the new Navara, a pickup truck, Nissan South Africa would supply the local and continental market. In common with many global automakers, Nissan does not have any significant production operations in sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa. However Nissan, and many rivals, are hoping that will change. A number have opened or committed to open plants elsewhere, including in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya.
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