■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.
CROSS-STRAIT COLLABORATION: The new KMT chairwoman expressed interest in meeting the Chinese president from the start, but she’ll have to pay to get in Beijing allegedly agreed to let Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) around the Lunar New Year holiday next year on three conditions, including that the KMT block Taiwan’s arms purchases, a source said yesterday. Cheng has expressed interest in meeting Xi since she won the KMT’s chairmanship election in October. A source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a consensus on a meeting was allegedly reached after two KMT vice chairmen visited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Director Song Tao (宋濤) in China last month. Beijing allegedly gave the KMT three conditions it had to
‘BALANCE OF POWER’: Hegseth said that the US did not want to ‘strangle’ China, but to ensure that none of Washington’s allies would be vulnerable to military aggression Washington has no intention of changing the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Saturday, adding that one of the US military’s main priorities is to deter China “through strength, not through confrontation.” Speaking at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, Hegseth outlined the US Department of Defense’s priorities under US President Donald Trump. “First, defending the US homeland and our hemisphere. Second, deterring China through strength, not confrontation. Third, increased burden sharing for us, allies and partners. And fourth, supercharging the US defense industrial base,” he said. US-China relations under
The Chien Feng IV (勁蜂, Mighty Hornet) loitering munition is on track to enter flight tests next month in connection with potential adoption by Taiwanese and US armed forces, a government source said yesterday. The kamikaze drone, which boasts a range of 1,000km, debuted at the Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition in September, the official said on condition of anonymity. The Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology and US-based Kratos Defense jointly developed the platform by leveraging the engine and airframe of the latter’s MQM-178 Firejet target drone, they said. The uncrewed aerial vehicle is designed to utilize an artificial intelligence computer
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday decided to shelve proposed legislation that would give elected officials full control over their stipends, saying it would wait for a consensus to be reached before acting. KMT Legislator Chen Yu-jen (陳玉珍) last week proposed amendments to the Organic Act of the Legislative Yuan (立法院組織法) and the Regulations on Allowances for Elected Representatives and Subsidies for Village Chiefs (地方民意代表費用支給及村里長事務補助費補助條例), which would give legislators and councilors the freedom to use their allowances without providing invoices for reimbursement. The proposal immediately drew criticism, amid reports that several legislators face possible charges of embezzling fees intended to pay
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