■ Automotives
China targets counterfeiters
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG and five other car-markers won a key piracy ruling after China signaled its intention to prosecute a glass factory for making counterfeit windscreens, the South China Morning Post said yesterday, without saying where it got the information. The Guang-dong provincial prosecutor overturned three earlier rulings by local prosecutors who had refused to crack down on Jieyang Kentong Automobile Glass Factory, the report said. Thousands of fake windscreens were seized in raids between 1999 and 2001, it said. Counter-feit parts cost the US vehicle industry US$12 billion a year, according to US estimates, the report said. Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, the world's No. 2 luxury carmaker, said Asian sales rose 19 percent to a record last year, helped by increased demand in China where sales almost tripled to 18,679 vehicles.
■ Transportation
FedEx to stay in Philippines
FedEx Corp, the world's biggest overnight package-delivery company, will sign an agreement this month to keep its Asia-Pacific hub in the Philippines instead of moving it to Guangzhou, Clark International Airport Corp president Adelberto Yap said yesterday. The cargo carrier will lease as much as 50 hectares at the former US Air Force base for 25 years, Yap said. FedEx will start operations at Clark in two years, before a lease at the former US Navy base Subic Bay expires in 2009, Yap said. FedEx will be the second package delivery company to have its Asian hub at Clark. United Parcel Service has another 50 hectares there. State-owned Clark Inter-national controls 2,700 hectares of the 5,400 former base. FedEx has won tax and other concessions from the Philippines government, the South China Morning Post said on Wednesday.
■ Software
Sun targets consumers
Sun Microsystems Inc's version of the Linux operating system is now available on personal com-puters sold on the Wal-Mart Stores Inc Web site. It's the first time Sun's software has been made available on computers for consumers, reports said. Sun previously targeted its desktop Linux project at companies, coun-tries and schools. Microtel PCs with Sun's Java Desk-top System, which start at US$298, include StarOffice, Sun's alternative to Micro-soft Office. Wal-Mart started selling Microtel computers with the Lindows operating system in 2002 and offers other Linux variants, Lycoris and Linare Linux. Wal-Mart spokeswoman Cynthia Lin said Window-based systems are still the most popular, although customer response to the Linux systems has exceeded the company's expectations.
■ Communications
Spammers eye IM services
A new form of Internet spam, this time aimed at users of instant messaging (IM) services, is set to explode, the New Scientist warns in today's issue. The phenomenon has been dubbed "spim" by experts, who reckon that this year 1.2 billion unsolicited messages will be sent over IM services run by Yahoo, MSN and other companies, and the volume will triple next year. Seventy percent of "spim" is pornography related. Unlike email, IM software allows users to exchange messages in real time. "This makes spim more insidious than spam because the messages pop up automatically, giving the recipient no chance of deleting them," the British weekly notes.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
‘ARMED GROUP’: Two defendants used Chinese funds to form the ‘Republic of China Taiwan Military Government,’ posing a threat to national security, prosecutors said A retired lieutenant general has been charged after using funds from China to recruit military personnel for an “armed” group that would assist invading Chinese forces, prosecutors said yesterday. The retired officer, Kao An-kuo (高安國), was among six people indicted for contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法), the High Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement. The group visited China multiple times, separately and together, from 2018 to last year, where they met Chinese military intelligence personnel for instructions and funding “to initiate and develop organizations for China,” prosecutors said. Their actions posed a “serious threat” to “national security and social stability,” the statement
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