■ Electronics
Media Center on the way
Philips intends to bring a so-called Media Center into stores by the end of the year. The firm revealed the plans prior to a recent international electronics fair in Berlin. The device resembles a DVD recorder, but in fact is a combination of entertainment electronics and a computer. The Showline Media Center MCP9350i can store videos, photos and music in its 250 gigabytes of storage space. These can then be sent on to other audio or video devices for playback, using either a cable or wirelessly. The Media Center also offers two TV tuners to allow one program to be watched while another is being recorded. It also has a built-in DVD and CD recorder and insertion slots on the front for various storage media types. The Media Center is due in December with a Pentium 4 chip, USB 2.0 and Firewire. Philips declined to name a price.
■ Electronics
Mitsubishi pulls PC's LCDs
Mitsubishi Electric Corp will stop production of liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) for personal computers as early as 2008 and focus on smaller panels for cellphones, the Nihon Keizai newspaper reported, without citing sources for the information. Mitsubishi Electric expects personal-computer panels will make up 10 percent of its total LCD sales in six months through to this month, down from 15 percent at the end of March as it seeks to counter price competition by rivals in South Korea and Taiwan, the newspaper said. Hitachi Displays Ltd, a unit of Hitachi Ltd, will raise production of cellphone panels, the newspaper said. The company's LCDs larger than 10 inches will be mainly for television sets, the newspaper said. Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Co, an affiliate of Toshiba Corp, will reduce its LCD panels for personal computers to 15 percent of total sales, down from 30 percent, the newspaper said.
■ Aviation
Fuel monopoly attacked
China Eastern Airlines (東方航空), one of China's top three carriers, has called for an end to the monopoly of fuel supply in the domestic market, which has sent its profits diving, state media said yesterday. "The fuel monopoly system must be broken to let airlines have the freedom to choose where to buy," said Li Fenghua (李豐華), president of China Eastern Airlines Group Co, in a report on the China Daily Web site. China Aviation Oil Holding Co holds a near-monopoly on China's jet-fuel market, limiting the choice for airlines such as China Eastern, which purchases 70 percent of its fuel from the domestic market. "The fuel market, which is monopolized by one company, has put Chinese airlines in an unfavorable position to compete with their overseas counterparts," Li said.
■ Mobile phones
Spice Nepal sets up shop
A privately owned cellular phone company yesterday said it had started services in Nepal, breaking the monopoly held by a state-owned telecommunications company. Spice Nepal Private Ltd said in a statement that it began signing up subscribers over the weekend in Kathmandu, and would spread its service to other cities in Nepal. Spice Nepal's entry into the cellphone market comes after the government opened the telecommunications industry to private businesses in 2000. Until Spice Nepal's entry, only government-owned Nepal Telecom provided cellphone services. It has about 300,000 subscribers.
National Taiwan University (NTU) yesterday said it disqualified a person from an entrance examination for using AI smart glasses to cheat, along with two others for making untruthful statements in their curriculum vitae. The three applicants were given null scores, Taiwan’s highest-ranked university said, calling on prospective students to be honest in the admissions process. NTU registrar Lee Hung-sen (李宏森) said that the cheating applicant wore a hat and thick-rimmed glasses to the second written exam for medical school, claiming that they felt cold. Suspicions were aroused when the applicant stared oddly at the test for long stretches while steadily bringing the paper
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck off the southern coast of Mindanao in the Philippines at 7:38am today, prompting the US Tsunami Warning System to issue an alert for neighboring countries, including Taiwan. The system issued a purple alert indicating a "tsunami threat." The potential threat zone includes Taiwan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Yap and Palau. Philippine authorities were assessing the damage from the quake, with the office of civil defense seeking to verifying initial reports that 15 people had been killed and 129 injured in the region, mostly from falling debris. Arlene Hollero, disaster chief of Maasim town in the Philippines' Sarangani Province,
‘GRAY ZONE’ PRESSURE: Beijing’s activities are intended to create the deceitful impression that China has jurisdiction over the area around Taiwan, the CGA said Taiwan’s rights over its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone must not be violated by any country, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday, adding that it will not accept any unprovoked actions. The council issued the remarks in response to the China Coast Guard conducting maritime enforcement drills near eastern Taiwan and claiming to fully exercise China’s maritime administrative law enforcement authority. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) has been closely monitoring the situation and is taking concrete steps to defend the nation’s sovereignty and secure its waters, the council said. China has no sovereign rights over the waters off eastern
Heavy rain is expected to affect parts of Taiwan this week, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday as a meteorologist said the active part of the annual plum rain season has started. A stationary plum rain front and southwesterly winds would bring unstable weather and abundant moisture to Taiwan from today for about a week, with the heaviest rainfall forecast for tomorrow and Wednesday, the CWA said. The agency said western and northeastern Taiwan, and mountainous areas in the east and southeast, could expect showers or thunderstorms on those two days, with localized heavy rain possible. Other parts of
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