■ JAPAN
Tokyo tells US to heal itself
Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga yesterday ruled out any plan to introduce a stimulus package or tax cuts despite growing calls for concerted efforts to help combat a US mortgage crisis. "Fiscal stimulus or tax cuts used to be called for when our economy deteriorated, but we are not in a situation that we need to use a conventional, knee-jerk approach," Nukaga said in an interview with TV Asahi. "We have to adapt ourselves to the present situation." He called on Washington to concentrate on its own efforts to subdue the mortgage crisis. "The epicenter of the subprime loan problem is in the United States," he said. "The United States has to resolve the problem by itself."
■ AVIATION
A380 slides malfunction
Airbus' A380 super jumbo, the world's largest passenger aircraft, has encountered problems with its inflatable escape slides, the Internet site of the Germany weekly Stern reported on Saturday. The escape slides had to be revised after just a few flights, the magazine said, citing reports from clients of the European aircraft maker. The article quoted an Airbus spokesman confirming that there had been a problem. The explosive charges meant to inflate the slides in just a few seconds during an emergency evacuation were deteriorating over time and becoming unusable, the report said. To replace the faulty charges, all the slides had to be dismantled in what was a time-consuming operation, Stern reported.
■ MINING
Workers end strike
Workers at Mexico's largest lead mine have ended a nearly month-long strike after receiving a 6 percent wage hike, Mexico's Labor Department said. The strike at the Naica mine in the border state of Chihuahua ended on Friday night after owner Industrias Penoles SAB agreed to the hike and said it would pay 50 percent of the salaries lost during the walkout, the department said in a statement late on Friday. About 350 members of the National Mining and Metal Workers Union stopped work on Jan. 15, arguing that their wages didn't reflect corporate profits from high metal prices.
■ AUTOMOBILES
GM tries to rein-in states
General Motors Corp CEO Rick Wagoner urged the National Automobile Dealers Association to lobby against individual US states trying to set their own limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Wagoner, speaking on Saturday group's convention in San Francisco, said several states want to go beyond requirements passed by the US Congress. If that happens and automakers must focus on state regulations, they won't be able to focus as much on alternative fuel vehicles to reduce oil consumption and pollution, he said. "We're not going to be able to accomplish everything that we otherwise could," he said. He also said dealers and automakers should push for infrastructure to handle new technologies, including hydrogen and ethanol fueling stations and charging stations for electric vehicles.
■ MYANMAR
Junta to auction gems
The military government will hold a new sale of gems, pearls and jade next month in a bid to earn much-needed foreign currency, despite calls to boycott the auctions, state media said yesterday. The official New Light of Myanmar said the sale would be held from March 9 to March 20, just two months after the last auction. The sale last month drew about 280 foreign buyers, despite calls from the US and rights groups for a boycott because of a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests last year. The government did not reveal how much it earned off the sale, but last November, the junta earned US$150 million from a gem emporium.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Green city under way
The oil-rich United Arab Emirates (UAE) was set to start work yesterday on construction of the world's first zero carbon emissions city, a spokesman for the project said. "Construction on Masdar City begins today," the spokesman said, adding that the 6.5km2 development would cost US$22 billion and was set for completion in 2015. Masdar City will house 50,000 people and will be run entirely on renewable energy such as solar power, exploiting the desert state's near constant supply of sunshine. The city is named after the Arabic word for "source." Residents will use electric-powered travel pods to get around the city. The UAE sits on the world's fifth-largest oil reserves and fourth-largest gas reserves, most of them in the emirate of Abu Dhabi
■ TELECOMS
PRC lines badly damaged
China's telecom industry faces a huge bill after the worst winter in decades, with millions of users cut off and thousands of kilometers of phone lines damaged, state media said yesterday. Preliminary government statistics showed the massive snow falls led to losses of 1.1 billion yuan (US$150 million), Xinhua news agency reported. Ten million mobile and fixed-line subscribers were still unable to use their phones as of Friday, Xinhua said. A total of 10,000 mobile phone base stations remain out of service and 150,000 poles for fixed-line services have collapsed, while 16,000km of lines have been damaged, Xinhua said. It reported that 80,000 telecom industry workers had fanned out across the country to seek to restore services. China had 547 million mobile phone subscribers and 365 million users of fixed-line services at the end of last year, government data said.
■ AGRICULTURE
France bans modified corn
France has banned a strain of genetically modified (GM) corn from US agribusiness giant Monsanto, delighting environmentalists but sparking outrage from the company and French farmers. At least one association planned a legal challenge to Saturday's decision, but leading environmental campaigner Jose Bove welcomed the decision, describing it as the fruit of a 10-year battle. A spokeswoman for Monsanto said on Saturday that France's decision to outlaw the use of the MON810 strain of corn, the only GM crop grown in France, "had no scientific basis." "Monsanto is studying all the legal options to defend the liberty of French farmers to use safe and authorized products," she said.
Taiwan would remain in the same international network for carrying out cross-border payments and would not be marginalized on the world stage, despite jostling among international powers, central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) said yesterday. Yang made the remarks during a speech at an annual event organized by Financial Information Service Co (財金資訊), which oversees Taiwan’s banking, payment and settlement systems. “The US dollar will remain the world’s major cross-border payment tool, given its high liquidity, legality and safe-haven status,” Yang said. Russia is pushing for a new cross-border payment system and highlighted the issue during a BRICS summit in October. The existing system
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to grow its revenue by about 25 percent to a new record high next year, driven by robust demand for advanced technologies used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications and crypto mining, International Data Corp (IDC) said yesterday. That would see TSMC secure a 67 percent share of the world’s foundry market next year, from 64 percent this year, IDC senior semiconductor research manager Galen Zeng (曾冠瑋) predicted. In the broader foundry definition, TSMC would see its market share rise to 36 percent next year from 33 percent this year, he said. To address concerns
Intel Corp chief financial officer Dave Zinsner said that a formal separation of the company’s factory and product development divisions is an open question that would be decided by the chipmaker’s next leader. Zinsner, who is serving as interim co-CEO following this month’s ouster of Pat Gelsinger, made the remarks on Thursday at the Barclays technology conference in San Francisco alongside co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus. Intel’s struggles to keep pace with rivals — along with its deteriorating financial condition — have spurred speculation that the next CEO would make dramatic changes. That has included talk of a split of the company’s manufacturing
PROTECTIONISM: The tariffs would go into effect on Jan. 1 and are meant to protect the US’ clean energy sector from unfair Chinese practices, the US trade chief said US President Joe Biden’s administration plans to raise tariffs on solar wafers, polysilicon and some tungsten products from China to protect US clean energy businesses. The notice from the Office of US Trade Representative (USTR) said tariffs on Chinese-made solar wafers and polysilicon would rise to 50 percent from 25 percent and duties on certain tungsten products would increase from zero to 25 percent, effective on Jan. 1, following a review of Chinese trade practices under Section 301 of the US Trade Act of 1974. The decision followed a public comment period after the USTR said in September that it was considering
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