■ ENERGY
Hitachi, GE to team up
Japan’s Hitachi and US giant General Electric will team up to sell midsize nuclear reactors to meet growing demand for power facilities in Southeast Asia, a Hitachi spokesman said yesterday. The move comes as soaring crude oil prices and worries about global warming spur interest in nuclear power. The move is aimed at tapping into the markets in countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand, where demand for reactors with output of one million kilowatts or less is expected to grow, spokesman Masayuki Takeuchi said.
■ AUTOMOBILES
Toyota 2Q sales up
Toyota Motor Corp, challenging General Motors Corp’s 77-year reign as the global auto leader, said preliminary second-quarter sales rose about 2 percent on higher demand in China and other emerging markets. The company sold about 2.406 million vehicles in the three months ended June 30, compared with 2.36 million a year earlier, Hideaki Homma, a spokesman, said by phone today. The company didn’t give a breakdown for regional sales. Toyota’s expansion to China, Brazil and other new markets made up for a drop in US sales in the period.
■ INTERNET
Joost opens in China
Internet TV service provider Joost said it launched a Chinese service yesterday with local portal TOM Online to tap the world’s largest online market. The company has also set up a joint venture with Hong Kong-listed TOM Group, parent of TOM Online, to bring a full Joost offering to China, Joost said in a statement posted on its Web site. “There’s a great market opportunity in China: content producers who are making high-quality content, advertisers eager to reach consumers online, and an active online community,” CEO Mike Volpi said. “Collaborating with TOM, which operates one of the most popular online portals in China, positions us strongly in the region,” he said in the statement.
■ TAKEOVERS
Tokio Marine buys US firm
Japanese non-life insurance giant Tokio Marine Holdings announced yesterday that it would buy US counterpart Philadelphia Consolidated Holdings Corp for about US$4.7 billion. The US firm’s board members agreed unanimously to a friendly takeover, Tokio Marine Holdings said in a statement. “Through the acquisition, our company aims to put a foot in a major non-life insurance market and realise a significant gain in income from overseas,” Tokio Marine, Japan’s largest non-life insurer, said in a statement. Under the deal, Tokio Marine Nichido, an affiliate of the Japanese non-insurance group, would form a new company in Pennsylvania that will merge with the US firm by December, subject to regulatory approval.
■ RETAIL
Costco earnings miss target
Costco Wholesale Corp, the largest US warehouse-club chain, said earnings will be “well below” analysts’ estimates after surging energy prices increased the retailer’s costs and made selling gasoline less profitable. Fourth-quarter earnings per share are expected to miss the US$1 consensus estimate of analysts surveyed by First Call, Costco said in a statement. The retailer also said it plans to buy back an extra US$1 billion of shares. Chief financial officer Richard Galanti said the company kept prices lower than planned to retain customers amid record fuel prices and the worst housing market since the Great Depression.
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 —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
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