■ IPR
Chinese court bites Apple
Apple has lost a court appeal against a decision that rejected its application to have its trademark logo extended to cover clothing and other items in China, state media reported yesterday. The verdict by the Beijing No.1 Inter-mediate People's Court means that Apple cannot claim that its logo is protected under law for those goods, Xinhua news agency said. Xinhua said the trademark appraisal com-mittee of China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) had previously rejected Apple's application from April 2000 to have its trademark logo extended to cover clothing, hats and shoes. Guangdong Apples Industrial Co, a maker of leather goods, had registered a similar trade-mark with an entire apple. Apple Computer's trade-mark has an apple with a bite taken out of it. The report said the SAIC, in its original decision, had concluded the two trade-marks were similar but not the same.
■ Electronics
Phones fuel LG Electronics
LG Electronics Inc, South Korea's second-largest electronics maker, said revenue last month rose 34 percent from a year ago after mobile-phone sales nearly doubled. Total sales rose to 2.1 trillion won (US$1.8 billion), compared with 1.5 trillion won a year earlier, the Seoul-based company said in a regula-tory filing to the Korea Stock Exchange. Sales rose 7.2 percent from April, the company said. Revenue from telecommunications rose 87 percent to 715.2 billion won, after mobile phone sales jumped 98 percent to 3.2 million units. Sales of TV and digital displays rose 18 percent to 739.6 billion won, while sales of refrigerators and other appliances rose 17 percent to 606 billion won, the statement said.
■ Internet
Yahoo gets Chinese portal
Yahoo Inc, launched a new Internet search portal that allows users to look for Web sites using Chinese or Eng-lish keywords, aiming to attract a larger share of China's 80 million Internet users to its services. Yahoo's portal, www.yisou.com, uses technology developed by the company to allow users to find Web sites by using keywords instead of having to know entire Internet addresses. Yahoo owns the second most-used Internet search engine behind Google Inc. "By combining the best assets of our proprietary Yahoo search technology with our expertise and knowledge of the Chinese online space, we created a dedicated search destination custom-ized for the Chinese user,"Yahoo China general manager Zhou Hongyi said in a statement.
■ Entertainment
EMI, Warner in talks
British music giant EMI and Warner Music Group (WMG) are to reopen merger talks as the EU readies to clear a tie-up between two of their major rivals, a British newspaper said yesterday, quoting sources close to the companies. "The road is now open for EMI and Warner to merge," a source familiar with WMG told The Times, after it emerged last week that a joint music venture linking Japanese group Sony and Bertels-mann of Germany was likely to be cleared without conditions. Time Warner sold its music division to a consortium led by Canadian media mogul Edgar Bronfman for US$2.6 billion last November, shortly after EMI conceded defeat in its fight for the recorded music arm of the business.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique