■ Internet
Livedoor delist coming soon
The Tokyo Stock Exchange is expected to delist shares in scandal-hit IT firm Livedoor as early as Monday because of a fresh criminal complaint against its former president, reports said yesterday. Livedoor founder Takafumi Horie will face a new fraud allegation to be filed with prosecutors by the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission, Jiji Press and other media reported. The commission's complaint alleges that Horie and his associates falsified Livedoor's financial report for the year to September 2004 to add ?5.34 billion (US$45.1 million) to the group's results, Kyodo News said, citing unnamed regulatory sources.
■ US Economy
Trade deficit hits record
The US trade deficit grew to a record US$68.5 billion in January, pumped up by rising oil prices and Americans' appetite for imported goods, especially from China, government data showed on Thursday. The latest increase, which came despite a rise in US exports, was fuelled by a strong market that is giving Americans money to spend. The values of imports and exports were the highest on record, the Bloomberg financial news agency reported. US imports rose 3.5 percent in January to US$182.9 billion, lifted by record shipments of consumer goods, autos, business equipment, and industrial supplies such as petroleum. Exports increased 2.5 percent to US$114.4 billion as US companies sold record amounts of industrial supplies, vehicles and capital goods, including aircraft, abroad, Bloomberg said.
■ Piracy
China creates piracy court
China has created a special court to prosecute product piracy cases, a government spokesman said yesterday, amid demands for Beijing to step up action against rampant illegal copying of movies, music, software and other goods. The supreme court has named a Judicial Court of Intellectual Property to handle such cases nationwide, court spokesman Sun Huapu said at a news conference held during the annual meeting of China's parliament. Last year China's courts convicted 741 people in 505 criminal product piracy cases, Sun said. Courts handled 16,453 civil cases of intellectual property rights violations last year, up more than 20 percent from the previous year, he added. US officials say Chinese copying of goods such as software, golf clubs, Hollywood movies and heart medications costs legitimate producers worldwide up to US$50 billion a year in lost potential sales.
■ Health
Chinese ads blasted
China should ban all medical advertising to protect public health, members of parliament were quoted by state media as saying yesterday, accusing most ads of "cheating and misleading" consumers. Advertisements promising cures for everything from hemor-rhoids to balding are plastered all over Chinese cities, on the sides of buses, inside taxis, in newspapers and even crudely glued to lamp posts. "Nowadays medical advertisements about hospitals and medicines are flooding the Chinese media, and some of them are full of appalling lies," Xinhua news agency quoted Kang Jiaoyang, member of a parliamentary advisory body, as saying. Some ads promised "miraculous cures" for cancer and AIDS, added Wu Liying, a delegate from the northeastern province of Liaoning.
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
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
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft
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