■ Petroleum
Yukos, Sibneft to merge
The owners of Russia's largest oil company, Yukos, and the country's No. 5 producer, Sibneft, are close to a deal on a merger, people briefed on the talks said on Sunday. If completed, the combination would create one of the world's largest oil companies. It would produce 2.16 million barrels of oil a day, roughly equal to Canada's daily production, and more than the world's fourth-largest publicly held oil company Chevron-Texaco. It would have a market value of US$34 billion, making it the most valuable company in Russia. The companies are expected to make an announcement today.
■ Semiconductors
Sony to boost production
Japanese electronics giant Sony today unveiled a plan to invest US$1.7 billion in the next three years to boost semiconductor production for its next-generation computer games. Sony and its computer games arm, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc (SCEI), said it would invest ¥200 billion (US$1.7 billion) to produce chips using the so-called 65nm process on 12 inch wafers. "With this investment, SCEI will manufacture the new microprocessor for the broadband era, code-named `Cell,' as well as other system LSIs [large-scale integrated circuits], to be used for the next generation computer entertainment system," the two companies said in a joint statement. As a first step, SCEI will spend ¥73 billion by March 2004 to introduce new production lines for semiconductor production at its plant in Nagasaki, western Japan.
■ Mobile Phones
Japan's sales decline
Japan's cellphone sales declined for a second consecutive year last year, falling 3 percent as users delayed buying new models, Gartner Dataquest said. Sales totaled 39.4 million units in the 12 months ended Dec. 31, Gartner's Japan unit said in a faxed news release. Sharp Corp's sales were the fastest growing, rising 75 percent to 5.3 million units for a 13.4 percent share of the market thanks to sales of its camera-equipped mobile phones for NTT DoCoMo Inc, the market researcher said.
■ Insurance
Tokio plans investment
Japan's top non-life insurer Tokio Marine and Fire said yesterday it plans to invest some ¥15 billion (US$126 million) in Sino Life Insurance, a Shanghai-based life insurer. Under the deal, Tokio Marine and its group firm Millea Asia Pte of Singapore, which handles insurance operations in Asia, will first invest Y5 billion in the Chinese firm, said Kazushi Miya, Tokio Marine spokesman. The amount is equivalent to a 24.9 percent stake, the maximum allowed for foreigners investing in a Chinese life insurer, he said.
■ Disinfectants
Sales in Singapore soar
Sales of disinfectants are soaring in SARS-hit Singapore with the sharp "hospital smell" pervading offices, hotels and homes, it was reported yesterday. Cleaning service companies told the newspaper Streats that practically everyone wants their premises disinfected over fears that the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, could spread by the virus being left on surfaces touched by an infected person. Sales of disinfectants and anti-bacterial products have doubled at some super-markets. An online grocery service reported disinfecting products are "flying out" five times faster than usual.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has