■ LABOR
Shoemakers strike
Nearly 14,000 workers at a South Korean footwear company in Vietnam have gone on strike to demand higher salaries, blaming the action on rising consumer prices, state media said yesterday. The workers of Hwa Seung Vina in southern Dong Nai Province stopped work on Saturday, asking company leaders to raise their incomes by at least 300,000 dong (US$18), said Tuoi Tre daily newspaper. The management of the company, which produces shoes for export, offered to raise workers’ salary by 200,000 dong but the compromise did not work, the paper said.
■ CHINA
Farmers’ income rises
Chinese farmers’ income in the first half of this year rose 10.3 percent in real terms from a year ago, state media said yesterday, signaling some success for policies to improve life in the countryside. By contrast, people in the cities saw a more modest 6.3 percent rise in incomes after deducting inflation, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing the National Bureau of Statistics. However, despite the faster income growth in the countryside the disparity between rural and urban areas remains huge. The average farmer made 2,528 yuan (US$370) in the first six months of the year, compared with 8,065 yuan for the average urban dweller, Xinhua reported.
■ EXPORTS
Palm oil exports to increase
Malaysia will put in place a series of measures to stabilize plummeting global palm oil prices including selling off crude stocks, a report said yesterday. Peter Chin, minister of plantation industries and commodities, told the Sunday Star newspaper that the government wanted to make sure that the almost 25 percent drop in prices in recent months did not become a long-term trend. Chin said the country would export crude — not refined — palm oil to China, India, Pakistan and the Middle East. It will also increase exports to Western countries where palm oil can be used as bio-fuel during the upcoming northern hemisphere winter, he said.
■ MANAGEMENT
Jobs not at death’s door
Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs, who has been dogged by investor concerns about his health, does not have recurrent cancer or a life-threatening health issue, the New York Times reported on Saturday. “While his health problems amounted to a good deal more than ‘a common bug,’ they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t have a recurrence of cancer,” journalist Joe Nocera wrote in a column. Nocera said he spoke to the Apple CEO about his health. In 2004, Jobs, 53, announced he had undergone successful surgery to remove a rare type of pancreatic cancer. Concerns about his health roared back last month, when a thinner-than-usual Jobs introduced the latest iteration of the iPhone in San Francisco.
■ COMPUTERS
Warning of ‘UPS’ virus
Internet users are being warned too look out for e-mail messages claiming to be from package courier UPS. The messages, delivered in English and in German, actually originate from hackers, the German Federal Agency for Security in Information Technology reported recently. The messages tell the recipient that a package could not be delivered because of a non-existent address. The message then encourages the user to click on an e-mail attachment to check the delivery slip data; anyone who does so allows a Trojan virus to sneak onto their computer.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
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
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
UNWAVERING: Paraguay remains steadfast in its support of Taiwan, but is facing growing pressure at home and abroad to switch recognition to Beijing, Pena said Paraguayan President Santiago Pena has pledged to continue enhancing cooperation with Taiwan, as he and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida expressed opposition to any unilateral change to the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait using force, Japanese media reported on Saturday. Kishida yesterday completed a trip to France, Brazil and Paraguay, his first visit to South America since taking office in 2021. After the Japanese leader and Pena spoke for more than an hour on Friday, exchanging views on the situation in East Asia in the face of China’s increasing military pressure on Taiwan, they affirmed that “unilateral attempts to change the