■ Technology
Infra-red Webcam launched
Taiwan-based Genius is offering a new infra-red Webcam for those who enjoy chatting away the long night hours. The VideoCAM Trek 310 is intended to produce high-quality pictures even in a room with poor lighting conditions, according to the company's German office in Langenfeld am Rhein. Good lighting for the subject will no longer be necessary. The new camera will deliver pictures in VGA with 32 bit color depth. Stills can be produced up to a resolution 1.3 megapixels. Up to 30 frames per second can be transmitted via a USB connection to the computer. Switchover to infra-red is automatic when the light conditions warrant. Genius said the camera would be available in Europe immediately at a price of US$48.28.
■ Auctions
Businessman gets Bond car
A Swiss businessman won the keys to James Bond's silver 1965 Aston Martin DB5 coupe on Friday with a US$1.9 million bid at an annual classic car auction in Arizona. The 45-year-old man, who did not want to be identified, placed his bids over the telephone through friend and car dealer Beat Roos to win the gadget-packed 007 car used in such classics as Goldfinger and Thunderball. Both men live in Bern, Switzerland. "His instructions were to bring the car back to Switzerland," Roos said. The winner, who was bidding in his first auction, will add the car to a collection of some dozen vehicles that includes classic Aston Martins and Porsches. Auction officials had estimated that Bond's vehicle could fetch between US$1.5 million and US$2.5 million. Two other classics cars also were sold, with bidders paying US$565,000 for gangster Al Capone's 1928 Cadillac sedan and US$195,000 for country music singer Hank Williams Jr's 1964 Pontiac Bonneville convertible, officials said.
■ World trade
India starts dumping probe
India has initiated anti-dumping investigations against import of bus and truck tires from China and Thailand, a news report said yesterday. India's directorate general of anti-dumping and allied duties (DGAD) ordered the probe after an industry body filed a complaint alleging firms from China and Thailand were dumping new or unused tires, tubes and flaps used in buses and lorries, PTI news agency reported. The Automotive Tyre Manufacturers Association had approached the directorate on behalf of tire manufacturers Apollo Tyres, Ceat, JK Tyres, Birla Tyres and MRF. A DGAD notification said the industry body had provided relevant data on the declining market share, stagnant sales, increase in imports and price under-cutting.
■ Economics
Seoul expects retail growth
South Korea, Asia's fourth largest economy, forecast continued retail growth this year as domestic demand picks up, the commerce, industry and energy ministry said in a report yesterday. The ministry said it expects sales to grow 4.0 percent year-on-year at department stores, 8.6 percent at shopping malls and 26 percent on the Internet this year -- compared with growth of 5.8 percent, 4.8 percent and 39.8 percent respectively last year. It attributed the sustained retail growth to recovering private consumption, the rallying stock market, robust exports, a potential consumer spending binge sparked by this year's World Cup and falling household debt.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
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