■ Internet
New Bagle bug hits Web
A new variant of the Bagle Internet worm, dubbed Bagle.B, was on Tuesday spreading quickly by e-mail throughout the world, Internet security experts said. "It was initially spread through spamming, which gave it a good start, and now it's picking up speed and spreading quite rapidly," Mikael Albrecht, with the Finnish Security firm F-Secure, said. The worm seemed to have appeared first in Germany, and was on Tuesday afternoon spreading quickly in Italy, Poland and the UK as well, he said. Few details of the new bug were yet available, as it was still being analyzed, but Bagle.B seemed to be installing a so-called backdoor function on infected computers, Albrecht said.
■ Entertainment
Disney to buy the Muppets
The Walt Disney Co said it will buy the "Muppets" characters, including Kermit, Miss Piggy and others, as well as the "Bear in the Big Blue House," franchise from the Jim Henson Co. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deal, which is expected to close in about two months, culminates a decades-long pursuit of the Muppets by Disney, which came close to acquiring the characters in 1990. The deal fell apart shortly after the death of company founder Jim Henson. The company then was bought by German media company EM.TV, which sold it back to the Henson family last year. The deal does not include the Sesame Street characters, such as Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, who were sold earlier by EM.TV to the Sesame Workshop.
■ Banking
Loose talk hurts Saga Bank
A young woman's e-mails to friends with false information about a regional bank's financial difficulties caused the bank to lose ?50 billion (US$476 million) of its account deposits, Japanese police authorities said yesterday. According to authorities, the Japanese woman in her 20s in southwestern Saga prefecture was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly sending the slanderous e-mails to her friends saying that Saga Bank would soon be bankrupt. The woman, whose name was withheld, sent the e-mail to 26 people in December who forwarded it on to others. Due to the false rumor, Saga Bank lost ?50 billion in its account deposits from customers in December, resulting in its total account deposits to fall by 4.2 percent from a year earlier. The woman admitted to the act, but said she did not expect to create such a big commotion.
■ Semiconductors
Wafer sales slow to 5.5%
Global growth in sales of silicon wafers that are used to make semiconductors such as computer chips slowed to 5.5 percent last year, an industry group said. Sales rose to US$5.8 billion last year from US$5.5 billion in 2002, when revenue grew 5.8 percent, Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) said in a press release. Shipments grew 10 percent to 5.15 billion square inches last year from 4.68 billion in 2002, when shipments rose 19 percent, SEMI said. In the fourth quarter, shipments rose 23 percent from the year-earlier period and 6.5 percent from the previous quarter, it said. Samsung Electronics Co, the world's second-largest semiconductor maker, last month reported that last year's net income fell 15.5 percent to 6 trillion won (US$5.2 billion) after a glut drove down prices of computer memory chips.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
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