■ Production
Plasma displays in demand
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co will start making plasma display panels for TVs two months earlier than planned to meet growing demand in north America, the Nihon Keizai newspaper reported. Osaka-based Matsushita plans to start the panel production at its plant in Amagasaki in the western prefecture of Hyogo in September, the newspaper said without citing source of its information. Previously it planned to start in Novem-ber. Together with Matsu-shita's existing three plasma-panel display plants, the company plans to raise annual production to 3.3 million units later this year, from 1.8 million units now, the report said.
■ Legal Issues
Deutsche Telekom to pay
Deutsche Telekom has agreed to pay US$120 million to US plaintiffs alleging the company gave misleading information surrounding its June 2000 public share offering. The company said in a statement released late Friday it was not conceding any wrongdoing in the agreement, which still has to be approved by a US District court in New York. No one was immediately available for comment at Deutsche Telekom on Saturday. "No inference of accounting errors or disclosure viola-tions may be drawn from the fact of or terms of the agreement," the statement said. Deutsche Telekom faces similar lawsuits in German courts brought about by shareholders charging the company covered up risks and sold the stock at too high a price during the same June 2000 offering. Those proceedings are to resume in June.
■ Software
Windows XP changes in EU
Microsoft Corp has agreed to find another name for the stripped-down version of the operating system it was ordered to sell in Europe and had labeled "Windows XP Reduced Media Edition." Industry analysts thought the name would discourage sales of the antitrust-driven European version. But the company says it was simply intended to distinguish clearly between the full-fledged operating system and the version the EU's antitrust ruling requires -- without Windows Media Player and related functions. The EC asked the company to change the name, Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake said on Friday. The Reduced Media Edition name "was descriptive of the product and reduced potential confusion in the market-place," Drake said. "How-ever, in the spirit of com-promise, we have agreed to make the change." A new name has not yet been chosen.
■ Airlines
Virgin rejects takeover
British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Group yesterday rejected a A$1.99 billion (US$1.54 billion) takeover offer by ports conglomerate Patrick Corp for the no-frills Australian airline Virgin Blue. Patrick, which holds a 45.95 percent stake in the carrier esta-blished by Branson in 2000, launched a surprise take-over bid on Friday, offering A$1.90 per share in cash for the shares it does not already own. But minority stockholder Virgin Group said the offer was too low, and that its Swiss invest-ment arm, Cricket SA, bought 5.1 million more Virgin Blue shares on Friday at an average price of A$2.04 "It is Virgin Group's view that Virgin Blue Holdings has much greater value than that indicated in the price being offered by Patrick Corp," Virgin Group said in a statement. Cricket SA's purchase brought Virgin's stake in the discount carrier to 25.1 percent.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
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