■ OIL
OPEC crude price picks up
The price for OPEC-produced crude picked up toward the end of the week after a downward trend following revised demand forecasts. One barrel of crude produced by one of OPEC's 12 members stood at US$87.01 on Thursday, up from US$86.57 the previous day, the OPEC Secretariat said yesterday. OPEC crudes peaked above US$90 last week. In its monthly oil market report released on Thursday, revised down demand for the fourth quarter by 70,000 barrels a day owing to a late onset of the US winter and the impact of higher consumer prices. Growth for this year was lowered to 1.7 million barrels per day, down 100,000 barrels from previous estimates.
■ AUTOMOBILES
Chery delays US entry
China's Chery Automobile (奇瑞汽車) may delay its planned entry into the US and European markets because of problems meeting tougher regulations on safety and emissions standards, Lin Zhang, general manager of the firm's international operations, said at seminar in Detroit on Thursday. He said Chery would likely enter the European market well after it delivers cars to its US-based partner, Chrysler LLC.
■ FINANCE
US eases accounting rule
A top EU regulator on Thursday welcomed a move by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to abolish rules that had obliged publicly listed European companies to comply with US accounting standards. SEC regulators approved new rules which will no longer oblige publicly traded EU companies with operations in the US to file accounting reports that comply with the US' Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). The SEC's move will also make it cheaper for EU companies to do business in the world's biggest economy, as they will no longer have to hire accountants to file accounting statements under GAAP.
■ FOOD
Police raid Senba Kitcho
One of Japan's classiest restaurant groups was raided by police yesterday on suspicion of falsely labeling its products in the latest scare about food safety in the country. TV footage showed more than a dozen police officers clad in dark suits entering the Osaka headquarters of Senba Kitcho, which runs high-end Japanese-style restaurants across the nation. The firm has already admitted that it sold confectionery and delicatessen items with false expiry-date labels after parttime workers told reporters about the practice. The raid was on suspicion that the company also marked ordinary beef as being expensive Kobe beef, media reports said.
■ AUTOMOBILES
Volkswagen recalls Passat
Volkswagen AG's (VW) Shanghai venture announced a recall of 2,440 of its Passat model cars this week because of problems with the locking system, China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said in a statement on its Web site yesterday. The recalled cars were produced by Shanghai Volkswagen Automotive Co between Aug. 11 and Aug. 24, it said. Shanghai Volkswagen is a 50-50 joint venture between the German automaker and Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. It was China's third biggest passenger-car maker by sales last year, reporting sales of 340,600 vehicles, data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed.
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
A former television news host and six military personnel — active and retired — have been indicted on espionage charges, Kaohsiung prosecutors said yesterday. Lin Chen-you (林宸佑), a former CTi News host and YouTuber, last year allegedly made videos at the direction of a Chinese agent criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party’s recall campaign, the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office told a news conference in Kaohsiung. He allegedly received 4,325 tether coins for the videos from an unidentified person surnamed Huang (黃), believed to be an agent of a hostile foreign power, they said. Lin, also known as Ma Te (馬德), has a show named
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