■ Airlines
A380 to visit Canada
The world's largest passenger jet is set to make its first trip to North America on Monday where it will undergo cold-weather testing in the barren northern Canadian territory of Nunavut. The Airbus A380 is scheduled to fly from France to the Nunavut capital of Iqaluit -- about 2,400km north of Toronto -- where officials were busy making preparations Saturday. "We're pretty honored to be hosting the first arrival of the newest plane of the 21st century here at Iqaluit," said John Graham, who manages the airport. The 273-tonne jumbo jet, with a wingspan of 80m and a seating capacity of 555, is expected to go into service late this year. Until then it will undergo full functionality tests under extreme weather conditions of up to minus 40?C. It has already undergone high altitude tests in Colombia this year and hot weather tests are due to begin in the summer.
■ Internet
ISPs to flog filter-proof mail
Time Warner Inc's America Online and Yahoo Inc plan to begin charging companies as much as US0.01 for each e-mail to bypass "spam" filters and go directly to users' mailboxes, the New York Times reported. Goodmail Systems, a closely held company based in Mountain View, California, will collect the electronic payment and verify the sender's identity, for messages marked "AOL Certified E- Mail," the Times said in an article published online. A US Senate committee will hold a hearing Feb. 7 to consider legislation that would ban Internet companies from giving preferential treatment to providers of content because of concern that those who can't afford to pay would be excluded from reaching users, the newspaper said.
■ Investment
China decentralizes controls
China's commerce ministry will allow local commerce departments and state economic zones to approve the setup of foreign-invested wholesalers and retailers next month to simplify procedures for allowing foreign funds into the country. Starting March 1, wholesale firms selling ordinary goods, and small and medium-sized retailers won't have to go to the ministry for the approval, the Beijing-based Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on its Web site yesterday, citing a circular. The move is among efforts to honor the commitments China made since its accession to the WTO in December 2001.
■ Investment
Trading complaint filed
Twelve investors in the Russian oil group Yukos have filed a complaint of insider trading in a Washington court against the Russian government and the leaders of the country's oil industry, the German weekly Der Spiegel reported today. The president of Russian energy giant Gazprom, Alexei Miller, and the Russian government are also in the sights of US justice because the two allegedly worked together to renationalize Yukos without compensating investors, Der Spiegel claims in the article. "It is simply stealing," the weekly quoted a US lawyer, Thomas Johnson, as saying. He said his clients invested in Yukos by buying American depositary receipts (ADRs) on the New York stock exchange. The value of the ADRs, which represented about 15 percent of Yukos shares, fell by US$6 billion, according to the German magazine.
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