■ Electronics
Panel production boosted
Samsung Electronics Co and Sony Corp will spend about 3 trillion won (US$3.1 billion) to boost their joint production of liquid-crystal-display panels, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported yesterday. If confirmed, the amount would be more than the about US$2 billion the companies said in April they aimed to invest. The companies said at the time they expected to manufacture 50,000 panels a month at the new production line that would start operation late next year. "Up to this point, nothing's been confirmed," Lee Eun-hee, a Samsung spokeswoman, said yesterday.
■ Energy
LUKOIL eyes UK refinery
Russia's top oil firm, LUKOIL, is looking at the possibility of buying a British refinery from BP Plc, Russia's Interfax news agency quoted LUKOIL CEO Vagit Alekperov as saying yesterday. "We will consider this possibility," Interfax quoted Alekperov as saying. BP said on Tuesday it had decided to sell its Coryton refinery near London, which processes 172,000 barrels of crude oil per day. LUKOIL, which is 17 percent owned by U.S. major Conoco-Phillips, is also bidding for an 80,000 barrel-per-day plant in Rotterdam which Kuwait Petroleum International has put up for sale.
■ Telecoms
Nokia starts legal action
Nokia Oyj started a civil litigation in China against companies for manufacturing and selling cellular handsets that copy Nokia's design. In its complaint, Nokia requested the court to order the defendants to stop making and selling the phones and pay monetary damages and other related costs, Nokia said yesterday in a statement. The model that's being copied is the Nokia 7260, a GSM/GPRS triple band phone with camera. The defendants are Shenzhen Telsda Mobile Communication Industry Developing Co (深圳天時達移動通訊) and Song Xun Da Zhong Electronic Co (松迅達中科電子), both based in Shenzhen, southern China, and two distributors, Nokia said.
■ South Korea
Court approves Chung's bail
The Seoul District Court has approved a request by lawyers for jailed Hyundai Motor Co chairman Chung Mong-koo to be released on bail, the court and company said yesterday. The court approved the bail request out of consideration for Chung's health and concerns over negative effects on South Korea's economy from leaving Hyundai without his leadership for a prolonged time, said a court official, who refused to be named as she is not to talk to the press. Chung, 68, can be released as soon as bail of 1 billion won (US$1.04 million) is paid, said Jake Jang, a Hyundai spokesman, adding that he expects Chung will be released "soon."
■ Telecoms
Nortel to trim 1,100 jobs
As part of a continuing struggle to restore its financial health, Nortel Networks said on Tuesday that it would cut a net 1,100 jobs across the company while creating 800 jobs, mainly at new, lower-cost operations in Mexico and Turkey. Nortel, the Canadian telecommunications equipment and software company, faces a market in which its main competitors are merging to create larger and potentially more efficient operations.
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