■FRANCE
Angry workers hold 3M boss
Angry workers were yesterday holding the boss of their factory hostage to try to make their US employers improve their redundancy package, police and union officials said. The detention came less than two weeks after workers held the boss of Sony France hostage overnight before freeing him after he agreed to reopen talks on their pay-off when the factory closed. The latest case was in the central town of Pithiviers, where employees of the US industrial conglomerate 3M detained their boss late on Tuesday to force him to renegotiate pay-offs and compensations for workers moved to other plants. “This action [hostage-taking] is our only currency. But there is no aggression,” union representative Jean-Francois Caparros said. “Talks were held overnight but they led nowhere.”
■FOOTWEAR
Nike stops orders
Sportswear producer Nike said yesterday it would stop orders with three footwear factories in China and one in Vietnam as the global downturn forces the company to trim output. It will also terminate shipments from a number of apparel contract plants, Nike said in an e-mailed statement. The locations of the apparel factories were not revealed. “This is part of a long-term consolidation of our supply chain that we began in mid-2007,” said Erin Dobson, the company’s spokeswoman in Beaverton, Oregon. “We are not immune to the current global economic situation and because of this we have accelerated our process.”
■FAST FOOD
Yum buys Chinese hot pot
US fast food giant Yum Brands Inc will pay more than US$60 million for a stake of up to 20 percent in Chinese hot pot chain Little Sheep, the Chinese company said yesterday. Yum Brands Inc, the parent of fast food chain KFC, will buy 143 million shares, or 13.9 percent, of Little Sheep at HK$2.4 (US$0.31) per share via a subsidiary, the Chinese firm said in a statement filed with the Hong Kong bourse. It has also agreed to acquire another 62 million shares of the Chinese restaurant at the same price after the first transaction is completed, bringing the total investment to US$63.7 million, the statement said.
■ENTERTAINMENT
Blockbuster downloads
Blockbuster Inc plans to let TiVo Inc subscribers download movies to their home TVs from its online movie library, in the latest deal aimed at broadening the brand to computers and other gadgets. Under the deal announced yesterday, most TiVo users with high-speed Internet service will be able to view movies offered by Blockbuster’s On Demand system. Blockbuster joins rival Netflix and Amazon.com, which also provide online video straight to TiVo users’ TVs. The agreement also calls for Blockbuster’s brick-and-mortar stores and online shop to sell TiVo’s digital video recorders, potentially exposing both companies’ customers to the other’s services.
■FINANCE
Mitsubishi creates brokerage
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc plans to take a 60 percent stake in a new brokerage that it will create with US investment bank Morgan Stanley, local media reported yesterday. The two firms have already agreed to merge their brokerage units next spring, with Mitsubishi UFJ taking control of the joint entity, the Nikkei financial daily said. Mitsubishi UFJ, Japan’s biggest banking group, said in a statement that no decisions had been made regarding potential business ventures with Morgan Stanley.
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
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