■ FINANCE
Germany calls for teamwork
The US will lose its status as a superpower of the world financial system and must work with its partners to agree on stronger international rules to regulate markets, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said. Speaking in the Bundestag on Thursday, Steinbrueck said the financial crisis would leave “deep marks” and proposed eight measures to address it, including a ban on speculative short-selling and an increase in bank capital requirements to offset credit risks. “The world will never be as it was before the crisis,” Steinbrueck told parliament. “The United States will lose its superpower status in the world financial system. The world financial system will become more multipolar.”
■ FINANCE
Bailout not enough: Faber
The US government’s US$700 billion bank rescue plan won’t be enough to revive the finance industry, investor Marc Faber said. The government should buy out home owners, Faber, managing director of Marc Faber Ltd and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, said at the CLSA Investors’ Forum in Hong Kong.
■ COMPUTERS
Matsushita aims high
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, the world’s largest consumer-electronics maker, plans to double sales of notebook personal computers in five years. Matsushita, the maker of Panasonic-brand consumer electronics, aims to sell 1.3 million notebooks globally in the 12 months ending December 2012, up from 660,000 computers last year, the Osaka-based company said in a statement yesterday. It introduced five notebook models to be sold in Japan from Oct. 17. Shipments of PCs in Japan fell 1 percent to 14.14 million units last year from a year earlier, research company IDC Japan Co said. Matsushita was ranked 10th in sales with a 2.1 percent market share.
■ TRADE
PRC ports may cool down
China’s ports could post slower growth in container traffic this year as a cooling global economy curbs demand for trade, the Chinese Ministry of Transportation said. Growth in container volumes will decline from last year’s 20 percent, ministry spokesman He Jianzhong said in an online broadcast yesterday. The country’s ports may post smaller profit growth this year on lower demand for Chinese-made goods overseas, the National Development and Reform Commission said on March 20.
■ TRADE
EU, China seek closer ties
EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming (陳德銘) called for closer trade ties between their economies, but announced no breakthroughs in talks on import controls and other disputes. “We stand to gain much more by opening up our economies to further trade and investment than we have risks to bear,” Mandelson said yesterday as he and Chen made a brief appearance before reporters.
■ TRADE
Six Mitsukoshis to close
Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings Ltd, Japan’s largest operator of department stores, said it would close six Mitsukoshi outlets by next year. The store in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro will be sold for US$709 million, the company said in a statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday. The closures will not affect earnings for the year ending next March, the company said.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
RESTAURANT POISONING? Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang at a press conference last night said this was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan An autopsy discovered bongkrekic acid in a specimen collected from a person who died from food poisoning after dining at the Malaysian restaurant chain Polam Kopitiam, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said at a news conference last night. It was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝) said. The testing conducted by forensic specialists at National Taiwan University was facilitated after a hospital voluntarily offered standard samples it had in stock that are required to test for bongkrekic acid, he said. Wang told the news conference that testing would continue despite
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)