■ ENERGY
Chopsticks to fuel Japan
Japan will try to turn the millions of wooden chopsticks that go discarded each year into biofuel to ease the country's energy shortage, officials at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said yesterday. Restaurants and convenience stores generally hand out disposable, wooden chopsticks without asking. Each of Japan's 127 million people uses an average of 200 sets a year, meaning more than 90,000 tonnes of wood, government data show. Earlier this month, a Chinese food association called for an end to the use of disposable chopsticks, saying 45 billion pairs were thrown away in China every year.
■ REAL ESTATE
Shanghai limits purchases
Shanghai plans to tighten controls on purchases of property by foreign companies to help cool surging real estate prices, a report said yesterday. "We no longer encourage foreign companies to purchase en-bloc properties rather than develop their own," the state-run newspaper Shanghai Daily quoted an official of the city's Foreign Economic Relations and Trade Commission, as saying. "Stricter requirements are applied to the approval of such acquisition deals to prevent prices from being pushed up by speculative investors,'' the official said.
■ ELECTRONICS
Sharp to launch 108-inch TV
Sharp Corp, Japan's biggest maker of liquid-crystal-display (LCD) televisions, plans to sell a 108-inch (274cm) set as soon as this year end to capture demand for larger models. The new model will be Osaka-based Sharp's biggest television, company president Mikio Katayama said at a briefing in Tokyo yesterday. Sony Corp, Sharp's closest Japanese competitor, sells a 70-inch LCD model, according to Tokyo-based Sony's Web site. Sharp aims to sell the model by 2010, Katayama said. The company also said it set up a sales unit in Moscow.
■ AVIATION
Delta board elects new CEO
Delta Air Lines said on Tuesday its board had elected industry veteran Richard Anderson as chief executive officer, succeeding retiring Gerald Grinstein, who brought the carrier out of bankruptcy. Anderson, 52, will take over on Sept. 1 at Delta, the third-largest US carrier, which emerged from creditor protection on April 30. Anderson has nearly 20 years of airline industry experience and will become the eighth CEO in Delta's 78-year history, the company said. Delta exited Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after 19 months of court-supervised bankruptcy protection, with the airline industry rocked by a slump in travel following the 2001 terror attacks in the US.
■ MEDIA
Tribune Co to go private
Tribune Co shareholders in Chicago voted to take the media giant private on Tuesday in a US$13 billion deal orchestrated by real estate mogul Sam Zell. But with the bulk of the deal financed through debt, concerns have been raised that it will fall apart in the current credit crunch roiling US financial markets. In a statement announcing that 97 percent of shareholders had approved the deal, the company tried to soothe concerns over the financing provided by Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan Chase. Tribune chairman Dennis FitzSimons said that financing was "fully committed" and that the deal ought to close in the fourth quarter of this year following approval from federal communications regulators.
NO HUMAN ERROR: After the incident, the Coast Guard Administration said it would obtain uncrewed aerial vehicles and vessels to boost its detection capacity Authorities would improve border control to prevent unlawful entry into Taiwan’s waters and safeguard national security, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday after a Chinese man reached the nation’s coast on an inflatable boat, saying he “defected to freedom.” The man was found on a rubber boat when he was about to set foot on Taiwan at the estuary of Houkeng River (後坑溪) near Taiping Borough (太平) in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), authorities said. The Coast Guard Administration’s (CGA) northern branch said it received a report at 6:30am yesterday morning from the New Taipei City Fire Department about a
IN BEIJING’S FAVOR: A China Coast Guard spokesperson said that the Chinese maritime police would continue to carry out law enforcement activities in waters it claims The Philippines withdrew its coast guard vessel from a South China Sea shoal that has recently been at the center of tensions with Beijing. BRP Teresa Magbanua “was compelled to return to port” from Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Shoal, 仙濱暗沙) due to bad weather, depleted supplies and the need to evacuate personnel requiring medical care, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) spokesman Jay Tarriela said yesterday in a post on X. The Philippine vessel “will be in tiptop shape to resume her mission” after it has been resupplied and repaired, Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, who heads the nation’s maritime council, said
CHINA POLICY: At the seventh US-EU Dialogue on China, the two sides issued strong support for Taiwan and condemned China’s actions in the South China Sea The US and EU issued a joint statement on Wednesday supporting Taiwan’s international participation, notably omitting the “one China” policy in a departure from previous similar statements, following high-level talks on China and the Indo-Pacific region. The statement also urged China to show restraint in the Taiwan Strait. US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and European External Action Service Secretary-General Stefano Sannino cochaired the seventh US-EU Dialogue on China and the sixth US-EU Indo-Pacific Consultations from Monday to Tuesday. Since the Indo-Pacific consultations were launched in 2021, references to the “one China” policy have appeared in every statement apart from the
More than 500 people on Saturday marched in New York in support of Taiwan’s entry to the UN, significantly more people than previous years. The march, coinciding with the ongoing 79th session of the UN General Assembly, comes close on the heels of growing international discourse regarding the meaning of UN Resolution 2758. Resolution 2758, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1971, recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the “only lawful representative of China.” It resulted in the Republic of China (ROC) losing its seat at the UN to the PRC. Taiwan has since been excluded from