■ ENVIRONMENT
City orders closures
Authorities in Tangshan, an industrial city in Hebei Province north of Beijing, have ordered 267 firms to shut down operations by Tuesday to improve air quality ahead of the Olympics, government and industry sources said yesterday. The firms include 66 steelmakers, as well as coke plants, cement firms and small power generators, a government official in Tangshan said. The companies would have to undergo strict environmental protection checks before they could resume production at an unspecified date, the sources said. The firms ordered to halt production were small, and their impact on Hebei’s steel industry would not be significant, analysts said.
■ELECTRONICS
Canon to build new factory
Japanese electronics giant Canon plans to build a new factory for digital cameras amid growing competition from domestic and foreign rivals, a report said yesterday. The firm will invest ¥15 billion (US$140 million) in the plant in Nagasaki, western Japan, to produce compact and single-lens reflex cameras, the Nikkei business daily reported without naming its sources. A Canon spokeswoman said the company would make an announcement next week in Nagasaki on the plant but declined to give further details. The plant, which will operate under a subsidiary, is scheduled to begin operating late next year with a production capacity of 4 million units a year and a workforce of more than 1,000, the daily said.
■SHIPBUILDING
Daewoo wins record order
South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering said yesterday it had won the world’s largest-ever shipbuilding order from Maersk Line of Denmark. Daewoo has signed a contract to build 16 container vessels for Maersk, the world’s biggest maritime transporter, for a record 2.44 trillion won (US$2.3 billion), the Korean firm said in a statement. All the ships will be delivered by June 29, 2012. “We won the world’s largest-ever shipbuilding order at a time when global market conditions are not so favorable. This highlights our competitive edge over rivals,” CEO Nam Sang-tae told journalists. With the latest deal, Daewoo has now won orders worth US$9.83 billion for 56 vessels so far this year.
■AVIATION
All Nippon may buy A380s
All Nippon Airways Co (ANA) is studying buying about five Airbus superjumbo A380s or other aircraft for long-haul routes, the Japanese carrier said yesterday. The nation’s No. 2 airline set up a panel on Thursday to decide which jets to buy, ANA spokeswoman Nana Kon said. “We have several options including the A380, from which we plan to choose the optimal equipment,” Kon said. The airline is also considering Boeing aircraft such as the 787 and 747, she said. the Nikkei reported yesterday that ANA’s panel is expected to decide to buy five A380 jets at about ¥100 billion (US$940 million).
■INFLATION
Rates jump to 14-year high
The Philippines’ inflation rate jumped to a 14-year high of 11.4 percent last month from a year ago as food and fuel prices soared, the government said yesterday. Last month’s index was higher than 9.5 percent in May and 2.3 percent in the same month last year, the National Statistics Office said. It is the highest inflation rate since May 1994. The increase to double-digit rates was brought about by “soaring prices of rice nationwide along with the upward adjustments of other food items,” the office said.
TAIWAN IS TAIWAN: US Representative Tom Tiffany said the amendment was not controversial, as ‘Taiwan is not — nor has it ever been — part of Communist China’ The US House of Representatives on Friday passed an amendment banning the US Department of Defense from creating, buying or displaying any map that shows Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The “Honest Maps” amendment was approved in a voice vote on Friday as part of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for the 2026 fiscal year. The amendment prohibits using any funds from the act to create, buy or display maps that show Taiwan, Kinmen, Matsu, Penghu, Wuciou (烏坵), Green Island (綠島) or Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) as part of the PRC. The act includes US$831.5 billion in
The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu yesterday said that he was “very impressed” by a UN court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change. Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which on Wednesday ruled that countries have a duty to protect against the threat of a warming planet. “I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the top chief of the Pacific archipelago’s island of Ambrym, told reporters in the capital, Port Vila. “We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for
Taiwan is hosting the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) for the first time, welcoming more than 400 young linguists from 43 nations to National Taiwan University (NTU). Deputy Minister of Education Chu Chun-chang (朱俊彰) said at the opening ceremony yesterday that language passes down knowledge and culture, and influences the way humankind thinks and understands the world. Taiwan is a multicultural and multilingual nation, with Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka, 16 indigenous languages and Taiwan Sign Language all used, Chu said. In addition, Taiwan promotes multilingual education, emphasizes the cultural significance of languages and supports the international mother language movement, he said. Taiwan has long participated
MASSIVE LOSS: If the next recall votes also fail, it would signal that the administration of President William Lai would continue to face strong resistance within the legislature The results of recall votes yesterday dealt a blow to the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) efforts to overturn the opposition-controlled legislature, as all 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers survived the recall bids. Backed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) DPP, civic groups led the recall drive, seeking to remove 31 out of 39 KMT lawmakers from the 113-seat legislature, in which the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) together hold a majority with 62 seats, while the DPP holds 51 seats. The scale of the recall elections was unprecedented, with another seven KMT lawmakers facing similar votes on Aug. 23. For a
RSS