■ Aviation
Tiger to offer US$6 flights
Budget carrier Tiger Airways announced yesterday it is offering one-way fares at US$6 to its entire network of 10 cities in six Southeast Asian countries. The booking period starts today through April 1 and is valid for mid-week travel on Mondays to Thursdays from July 1 until Oct. 29. The carrier, owned by Singapore Airlines (SIA), said that the offer coincided with a celebration of the completion of its "first-phase network expansion." The airline is extending the low fares to all the cities it covers including Singapore, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Hatyai, Phuket, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Macau, Padang and Manila. Tiger is the first budget airline to be granted landing rights for Padang, the provincial capital of West Sumatra in Indonesia.
■ Aviation
AirAsia in deal with Airbus
Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia has inked a contract to buy 60 new Airbus aircraft, with an option to purchase another 40 A320 jets as part of its regional expansion, a report said yesterday. With the order and option commitment, AirAsia in a statement to Bernama news agency said it had become the single largest customer for Airbus in the Asia-Pacific region. The airline in December said it would buy 40 Airbus aircraft and exercise an option to buy another 40 A320 jets to maintain its position as Asia's leading budget airline. AirAsia said it decided to increase the Airbus order after the rollout and the success of its Indonesian operations, PTAWAIR International (AWAIR). "Within three months of its operations, AWAIR has carried over 120,000 guests and introduced flights to five domestic destinations in Indonesia," it said.
■ Agriculture
New mad cow case
Japan's Health Ministry confirmed the country's 16th case of mad-cow disease, one day before its Food Safety Commission meets to discuss lifting a ban on US beef imports. A nine-year-old Holstein cow raised in Hokkaido and slaughtered on March 24 tested positive for mad cow, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said in a statement on its Web site. Japan has screened every cow slaughtered since September 2001 when it found its first mad-cow case, and halted imports of US beef in December 2003 after a cow in Washington state was discovered to be BSE-infected.
■ Retail
Tiffany cited as target
Tiffany & Co, the largest US jewelry retailer, may be a target for a takeover, Barron's reported, citing money manager and shareholder Shawn Krevetz of Esplanade Capital in Boston. The company may fetch US$40 to US$50 a share in a takeover, Krevetz told the weekly business newspaper. He said Coach Inc would be a good match for Tiffany. Andrea Resnick, Coach's vice president of investor relations, told Barron's the company "isn't interested in making acquisitions." Other potential suitors for Tiffany included Europe's LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, the world's biggest luxury goods maker, Barron's said. Mark Aaron, Tiffany's vice president for investor relations, declined to comment to Barron's about "market rumors." Tiffany recently lowered its profit growth targets because of missteps in Japan, which accounted for one-fourth of the company's US$2.2 billion in sales in the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, the newspaper said.
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
RSS