■ Corporate taxes
Singapore to cut taxes
Singapore will lower its existing corporate tax rate of 20 percent by at at least one percentage point to stay competitive, former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀) said in remarks published yesterday. "You know this is a tough and competitive world. People don't come because they like Singapore," Lee, the influential minister mentor in his son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's (李顯龍) Cabinet, was quoted as saying by the Sunday Times. "They come because the returns are better," he said. In reference to Hong Kong, where companies are taxed at just 17.5 percent, one of the lowest in the world, Lee said Singapore had to lower its corporate tax rate or lose out to the former British colony in attracting investors. Details will be announced on Feb. 15.
■ Health products
TV show a false advertiser
Japanese newspapers vented their anger yesterday after a popular local television program made false claims about the weight loss benefits of fermented soybean. The program, aired earlier this month, claimed that eight people who ate the substance -- called natto in Japan -- for two weeks at breakfast and dinner lost as much as 3.4kg. The program, Encyclopedic Discovery, triggered a buying frenzy, emptying shelves of the product. But the show's producers reluctantly admitted the weight loss claims were fabrications and apologized on Saturday.
■ Fishing
Tuna tracking in the works
International fisheries officials are expected to push for a global tracking system that would certify the origin of every tuna headed to market at an unprecedented conference that convenes today to reverse a sharp decline in tuna catches. The conference brings together the world's regional tuna management groups and runs through Friday in Kobe, Japan. Attendees, representing commercial fishing and government regulators, will seek the creation of a framework to produce certificates of origin for all species of tuna they catch, Kyodo News reported yesterday.
■ Toys
Crocodile Hunter doll
A talking "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin action figure with his recorded voice will go on sale across the US next month. The toys will also be sold in Canada, the UK, France and Germany. The 39-piece Steve Irwin Wildlife Adventure Series will launch next month at the 2007 International Toy Fair in New York, toy maker K&M International said. Irwin recorded the voice for the toy before his death last year. The doll says phrases like "Do you see that? It's a giant golden orb spider and she's built her web right across our path! It's super sticky for catching small birds and bats. Let's not disturb it."
■ Insurance
Chinese market booms
China's insurance market expanded 14.4 percent to US$73 billion last year as demand for insurance coverage rises. Insurance companies' total assets rose by 29 percent, according to documents issued at the China Insurance Regulatory Commission's annual conference yesterday in Beijing. The premiums on property and casualty cases jumped 22.6 percent to 150.9 billion yuan, while life premiums rose 10.7 percent to 359.3 billion yuan, the regulator's Chairman Wu Dingfu (吳定富) said. Efforts to dismantle the welfare system are spurring sales.
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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