■COMPONENTS
Fujitsu drops HDD heads
Japanese high-tech giant Fujitsu Ltd said yesterday it was ending production of hard disk drive (HDD) heads as part of an overhaul of the loss-making business. The firm said it would book a one-off loss of ¥5 billion (US$56 million) because of its earlier investment in a plant in Nagano city, northwest of Tokyo, to make the components. The facility will continue to make circuit boards and employees working in the HDD head business will be moved to new jobs, it said. The HDD head production will cease at the end of March, but Fujitsu is continuing talks with several companies over a possible sale of its overall HDD business, company spokesman Takashi Koto said.
■MOTORCYCLES
Yamaha recalls bikes
Japan’s Yamaha Motor Co said yesterday it would recall 53,814 motorcycles to replace a defect in rear-wheel shock absorbers that caused slight injuries to one rider. The TW200E models were manufactured between 1987 and 2001 and all were sold in Japan, the motorcycle firm said in a statement. The recall followed six reports of problems with the joint part owing to a lack of tenacity, the statement said. The problem could result in a breakdown of the part and a loss of stability. One rider was slightly injured when a TW200E motorcycle with the defect scraped a guardrail, a Yamaha spokesman said.
■ENERGY
Chinese imports doubled
China’s imports of oil products more than doubled last year as local producers were forced to scale down their activity, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. Beijing imported 14.7 million tonnes of oil products, including gasoline, diesel oil and kerosene, last year, up 107.4 percent from the year before, Xinhua said, citing the China Petroleum and Chemical Association. China had to import more after local oil product firms cut or halted their operations, it said. The firms made the move because local price controls prevented them from passing on the cost of soaring global crude oil prices to consumers, it said.
■MINING
Group to buy coal stake
South Korean and Australian firms have agreed to acquire a major stake in an Australian soft coal mine, Yonhap news agency said yesterday. The consortium led by South Korea’s state-run Korea Resources Corp (KORES) will buy a 47.4 percent stake worth 37 billion won (US$26.6 million) in the Baralaba mine in Queensland, the report said. The consortium consists of KORES, SK Energy, Korea East-West Power and Australia’s Cockatoo Coal, it said. The mine will increase its production of soft coal to 4 million tonnes a year by 2013 from 500,000 tonnes, it said. Yonhap quoted KORES president Kim Shin-jong as saying the state mineral explorer would seek to participate in the development of eight other coal mines in Australia.
■INDIA
Bank cuts growth forecast
The central bank is cutting its economic growth forecast to 7 percent — down from an earlier estimate of 7.5 to 8 percent — but is leaving key interest rates unchanged. The bank says growth in industrial production and consumer demand has slowed, business confidence is deteriorating and the fiscal deficit has risen sharply. In his quarterly policy review, Reserve Bank of India Governor D. Subbarao said that the global slowdown clearly shows that emerging economies remain closely linked to developed markets.
■DEFENSE
Raytheon wins US contract
Raytheon Co, the world’s largest missile maker, won a contract from the US Army valued at US$154 million to upgrade Patriot air-defense systems for Taiwan. The contract includes upgrade kits for radar and command and control components, a radar refurbishment and related engineering and technical services, Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon said in a statement on Monday. The upgrades will allow Taiwan’s Patriot systems to fire the latest version of the missile, the Patriot Advanced Capability-3, or PAC-3. The US in October proposed selling US$6.46 billion in weapons to Taiwan, including 330 of the Lockheed Martin Corp-built PAC-3 missiles valued at US$$3.1 billion.
■ENTERTAINMENT
Janet Jackson cancels tour
The global economic crisis has claimed another victim — pop star Janet Jackson’s tour in Japan. The younger sister of pop icon Michael Jackson has called off her trip next month, saying the economic slowdown no longer made it profitable. “Due to the impact of the global economic crisis, she has been obliged to delay her tour,” her promoter, Kyodo Yokohama, said in a statement late on Monday. It offered an apology and said it would refund tickets, which started at ¥9,800 (US$110) each. Jackson had been due to perform on Feb. 14 and Feb. 15 at a major concert venue in the Tokyo suburb of Saitama.
■TELECOMS
Apple awarded patent
Apple has won a US patent for touch-screen controls and gained a potential legal weapon against iPhone competitors. US Patent 7,479,949 is awarded to “[Steve] Jobs et al” for a method of “detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display” to command computing devices. A multi-page patent available online at the US Patent and Trade Office on Monday details iPhone or iPod Touch commands such as finger or thumb swiping, twisting, or spreading to flip pages, rotate views or enlarge images.
■AUTOMOBILES
Honda shifts output
Honda Motor Co said yesterday it would roll back production further in Japan and North America but step up output in China, where demand is still growing despite the global economic crisis. Japan’s second-largest automaker plans to boost output in China as output at the Dongfeng Honda Automobile Co in China has steadily risen in recent years, producing more than 160,000 vehicles last year, up nearly 30 percent from the previous year, a company official said. Honda is hoping to raise output to full capacity of 240,000 vehicles, bringing its total output in China to 650,000, she said.
■TELECOMS
Siemens retains forecast
German industrial giant Siemens said yesterday it would stick with its operating profit forecast of 8 billion euros to 8.5 billion euros (US$10.6 billion to US$11.2 billion) despite the global slowdown slashing earnings. The target for the year to September 2009 has “become more ambitious ... and we will have to look at it carefully each quarter,” Siemens said as it reported an 81 percent plunge in net profit to 1.23 billion euros during the last quarter. The Munich-based firm said sales in the quarter ending last month rose 7 percent to 19.63 billion euros, but orders were down 8 percent at 22.2 billion euros. Siemens head Peter Loscher warned shareholders that the “most difficult quarters are still to come.”
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
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