■SHIPPING
Bone fragments found
Malaysian authorities yesterday found bone fragments from two bodies on board a stricken Taiwanese oil tanker that was involved in a collision in the Malacca Strait earlier this week. The MT Formosaproduct Brick (立善輪) caught fire and was seriously damaged on Tuesday after a collision with a Greek-managed bulk carrier in the narrow shipping lane. Nine crew members remain unaccounted for. Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency Director First Admiral Tan Kok Kwee said although search and rescue efforts were still ongoing for the missing crew members, authorities were not holding out much hope.
■ELECTRONICS
Firm builds a thinner fan
A Kaohsiung-based company has earned a silver award at the 2009 National Invention and Creation contest for developing the world’s thinnest fan to cool down electronic gadgets. The fan, with a thickness of only 3mm, is nearly half as thick as the 5mm regular mini fans, and is one 1mm thinner than the thinnest fan of 4mm produced by a Japanese company. Founded in 1980, Sunon Group (建準電機) has patented its invention, which can be installed in small spaces in electronic products and propel strong air currents through its blades.
■CHINA
Twelve million jobs needed
China can create 12 million jobs this year, about half the number needed should the economy hit an 8 percent growth target, a government official said in an online statement on Friday. The shortfall of 12 million jobs will be larger than last year, according to Yin Weimin (尹蔚民), minister of Human Resources and Social Security. He didn’t provide a comparative number. New university graduates, workers from the countryside and low-income city residents have the biggest difficulty in landing jobs, Yin said. Opportunities at export-oriented companies have plunged because of the international financial crisis, he said.
■AUTOMOBILES
Honda to sell electric cars
Japan’s Honda Motor Co plans to sell electric vehicles in the US early next decade to meet growing demand there for environmentally friendly cars, a newspaper reported yesterday. Honda, which has so far focused on hybrid vehicles, is now developing at least one prototype of an electric vehicle to be unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show in October, the Nikkei Shimbun business daily said. The move comes after its domestic rivals — Toyota Motor Corp and Nissan Motor Co — announced similar plans.
■AUTOMOBILES
VW assembly bid hits hurdle
Negotiations to assemble Volkswagen cars in Malaysia have ground to a halt, the Edge newspaper reported, citing unidentified sources. Discussions between Germany-based Volkswagen AG and DRB-Hicom Bhd, a Malaysian auto and construction group, ran into difficulty about three weeks ago following interference from certain unnamed government-linked bodies, the newspaper quoted unidentified officials as saying.
■INTERNET
Facebook supports tweets
Facebook on Friday said it is letting celebrities, businesses and others with public pages at the social-networking hotspot instantly turn status updates into tweets at Twitter. In coming days, Facebook will release software enabling managers of public pages to route updates automatically to the micro-blogging service.
When an apartment comes up for rent in Germany’s big cities, hundreds of prospective tenants often queue down the street to view it, but the acute shortage of affordable housing is getting scant attention ahead of today’s snap general election. “Housing is one of the main problems for people, but nobody talks about it, nobody takes it seriously,” said Andreas Ibel, president of Build Europe, an association representing housing developers. Migration and the sluggish economy top the list of voters’ concerns, but analysts say housing policy fails to break through as returns on investment take time to register, making the
‘SILVER LINING’: Although the news caused TSMC to fall on the local market, an analyst said that as tariffs are not set to go into effect until April, there is still time for negotiations US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he would likely impose tariffs on semiconductor, automobile and pharmaceutical imports of about 25 percent, with an announcement coming as soon as April 2 in a move that would represent a dramatic widening of the US leader’s trade war. “I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club when asked about his plan for auto tariffs. Asked about similar levies on pharmaceutical drugs and semiconductors, the president said that “it’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll
NOT TO WORRY: Some people are concerned funds might continue moving out of the country, but the central bank said financial account outflows are not unusual in Taiwan Taiwan’s outbound investments hit a new high last year due to investments made by contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and other major manufacturers to boost global expansion, the central bank said on Thursday. The net increase in outbound investments last year reached a record US$21.05 billion, while the net increase in outbound investments by Taiwanese residents reached a record US$31.98 billion, central bank data showed. Chen Fei-wen (陳斐紋), deputy director of the central bank’s Department of Economic Research, said the increase was largely due to TSMC’s efforts to expand production in the US and Japan. Investments by Vanguard International
WARNING SHOT: The US president has threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on all imported vehicles, and similar or higher duties on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors US President Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested that a trade deal with China was “possible” — a key target in the US leader’s tariffs policy. The US in 2020 had already agreed to “a great trade deal with China” and a new deal was “possible,” Trump said. Trump said he expected Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to visit the US, without giving a timeline for his trip. Trump also said that he was talking to China about TikTok, as the US seeks to broker a sale of the popular app owned by Chinese firm ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動). Trump last week said that he had
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