Print

Mail

wiki links

World Business Quick Take

■ Airlines
Pilot contract talks fail
Two of the US' largest airlines, Delta and Northwest, failed to reach new contract terms with their pilots on Wednesday after marathon negotiations. Without a deal, Northwest's pilots waited for a judge to rule on whether that carrier could throw out their union contract and impose its own terms. In Delta's case, arbitrators will decide that issue after a hearing set to begin March 13. Northwest Airlines Corp did reach a tentative agreement with flight attendants on Wednesday, the day a New York bankruptcy court had set as a deadline.

■ Monetary policy
Japan mulls `reference rate'
The Bank of Japan is considering setting a "reference rate" on inflation to guide markets on its monetary policy intentions, reports said yesterday. The central bank has been wary of introducing a formal inflation target but is mulling a softer goal to improve transparency after it returns to a conventional interest rate policy, Jiji Press and other media reported. The reference rate would be the rate of consumer price inflation deemed desirable to help achieve sustainable economic growth, Jiji quoted anonymous sources as saying.

■ Electronics
Samsung bullish on LCD TVs
Samsung Electronics Co, the world's biggest maker of liquid-crystal displays (LCDs), said it expects to increase its share in Asia's LCD television market. "We have seen explosive growth in the demand for LCD TVs in the region," led by Singapore and Australia, Park Sang-jin, president of Samsung's Southeast Asian business, which includes Australia, said in a statement before a media lunch in Singapore. "I envision that every home in Asia will own a Samsung flat panel," Park said, without giving numbers or a timeframe. Samsung projects that Southeast Asia's LCD TV market sales will rise to US$2.4 billion by 2008, according to the statement.

■ Software
Oracle offers search product
Oracle Corp, the world's third-biggest software maker, began selling software that allows users to search only personal data on their work computers such as e-mail, word documents and calendar appointments. Chief executive Larry Ellison said the company's new search program "is one of the biggest products in years," and may help draw users away from Google Inc, which also offers software for searching content on computers and operates the world's most-used Internet search site. "Google's always had a good search, but it was the security side that they're not good at," Ellison told reporters after speaking at the annual Oracle OpenWorld Tokyo 2006 conference in Japan.

■ Technology
Hitachi develops elevator
Japan's Hitachi says it has developed a new elevator system in which six to eight cars can circulate on a single loop, sharing the space conventionally used by two. In the new system, each car moves sideways after reaching the top floor and then descends on the loop before shifting sideways again at the bottom to move up, Hitachi said in a statement. "The new system can save space and reduce passenger waiting time by transporting more than double the number of people compared to a conventional elevator system," it said on Wednesday.

This story has been viewed 1436 times.