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World Business Quick Take

■ Telecoms
Phone can detect metal
The Finnish phone maker Nokia has devised a mobile handset that can also double as a metal detector, enabling the owner to look for concealed guns, hidden electrical cables and lost car keys, the British weekly New Scientist reports. The US patent application filed by Nokia says the phone is fitted with an induction coil, whose main use is to get a clear audio signal for people with hearing difficulties. But it can also be used to detect metal at short distances, says the report, carried in next Saturday's issue of the British science weekly.

■ Taxation
Sharp to pay back taxes
Japanese electronics maker Sharp Corp said yesterday it would pay ¥300 million (US$2.59 million) in back taxes after being accused of hiding income over three years. The investigation was brought by the Osaka Taxation Bureau and covers the three years through March last year, Sharp spokesman Yoshifumi Seki said. The bureau claims Sharp failed to pay taxes on ¥800 million (US$6.9 million) of income. Sharp denies intentionally hiding income, and said it would comply with orders to pay ¥300 million in back taxes on the amount, Seki said.

■ Trade
China, HK expand FTA
China has agreed to further open its economy to goods and services from Hong Kong under an expanded free trade agreement that aims to strengthen economic ties between the mainland and the territory, officials said yesterday. The free trade pact -- called the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement -- will waive import tariffs on a broader range of Hong Kong goods including electronics and spices, Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang (曾蔭權) announced at a trade forum. The pact will also grant the city's legal, tourism and construction industries greater access to the mainland market starting next year, he said.

■ Trade
China creating difficulties
Countries in the Asia-Pacific area haven't benefited equally from growing free trade, with economic giant China overpowering the region's smaller and poorest nations, a UN report released yesterday said. "China's stunning economic growth, in so many ways an inspiration to its Asia-Pacific neighbors, is not delivering reciprocal benefits to its regional trading partners -- and is in some cases creating difficulties for them," said Kemal Dervis, a UN Development Program administrator, in a report. The program's 2006 Asia-Pacific Human Development Report added that free trade has also widened the gap between rich and poor within countries. Moreover, these nations were being "out-competed and overwhelmed by exports from China," it said, calling for fairer global trade regime.

■ Aviation
EADS sues over media leak
The aerospace consortium European Aeronautics Defense and Space (EADS) said yesterday it was filing a legal complaint against unknown parties for the leak of internal documents to the press. The complaint is related to the publication on Monday in the French daily Le Monde of extracts from the minutes of a meeting in Amsterdam on May 12. Le Monde used the extracts to show that the evaluation of problems with the A380 superjumbo provoked disagreements between French and German EADS managers, rather than between the firm and its subsidiary Airbus.

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