■ METALS
Alcoa presses Alcan bid
US aluminum giant Alcoa Inc on Wednesday reaffirmed its hostile bid for Canadian rival Alcan Inc, saying its US$33 billion offer was "full and fair." The announcement by Alcoa came a day after Alcan rejected the offer from the US firm, amid reports that Alcan was in merger talks with the world's biggest miner, BHP Billiton of Australia, and possibly others. Alcoa chairman and chief executive Alain Belda said his company would continue to press its offer as "the most compelling choice for Alcan's shareholders." Among the other firms that have been named as possible suitors for Alcan are Brazil's CVRD and Anglo-Swiss company Xstrata.
■ METALS
Chinese mills look abroad
Four large Chinese steel mills have formed a joint investment company to explore overseas resources and escape what local experts termed foreign "manipulation" of iron ore prices, the Shanghai Securities News reported yesterday. Baosteel, China's biggest steel maker, will own 20 percent of the joint venture, with Wuhan Iron and Steel Group Corp, based in Hubei Province, holding 50 percent, the newspaper reported. The remaining 30 percent will be divided equally between Anshan Iron and Steel Group Corp and Shougang Group, the report said, giving no financial details.
■ ELECTRONICS
Plasma panel deal reached
Japanese electronics companies Hitachi Ltd and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co will supply each other with plasma display panels, the two companies announced yesterday. Matsushita, maker of Panasonic brand consumer electronic products, will start to supply Hitachi with 103-inch plasma panels this fiscal year, the companies said. Hitachi will start to supply Matsushita with 85-inch plasma panels in the year starting next April, they said. The two companies have been partners in the plasma TV business since February 2005, when they agreed to collaborate on research and development, production, marketing and intellectual property.
■ MEDIA
No kowtowing: Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch has denied allowing political pressure from Beijing to influence the running of his News Corp media empire, the Financial Times (FT) said yesterday. The charges have become a rallying cry for opposition to Murdoch's bid for control of Dow Jones and its flagship newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. In an interview with the FT, Murdoch denied bowing to Beijing when he dropped the BBC from Star TV in 1993. He also rejected assertions that Beijing had any influence in his decision to cancel publication of memoirs written by Chis Patten, the former governor of Hong Kong.
■ INTERNET
Google tests translation tool
Google Inc on Wednesday launched a test version of a translation tool that enables people to search the Internet in any of a dozen languages and have the results converted into their chosen tongue. A beta version of Google's "cross-language information retrieval" feature is online at http://translate.google.com/translate_s. The software translates queries to perform multi-lingual searches and then converts the results to a searcher's language. The languages include French, Arabic, English, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish and Chinese.
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