■BIOTECHNOLOGY
US states sue Amgen Inc
Amgen Inc, the world’s largest biotechnology company, is being sued by 15 US states after a probe into an alleged nationwide kickback scheme that aimed to boost sales, New York’s attorney-general said on Friday. Attorney-general Andrew Cuomo said Amgen and two units of AmerisourceBergen Corp offered kickbacks to physicians and others to increase sales of the anemia medicine Aranesp. The complaint charges that the companies gave free samples of Aranesp to medical providers such as physicians, then encouraged them to bill insurance companies and the government’s Medicaid program for reimbursement.
■FOREIGN EXCHANGE
Stiglitz weighs in on yuan
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said “there will have to be some adjustments in the exchange rate” between China’s yuan and the dollar. “It is very difficult to maintain fixed exchange rates in a very volatile economy for a very long period of time, which is why the world has abandoned the fixed exchange rate system,” he said in a speech in Shanghai yesterday. He said the US economy was still “nowhere near” the end of its recession and the labor market was in “very bad shape.”
■BANKING
Executives to meet with Fed
Executives of the US’ 28 largest banks will meet with Federal Reserve supervisors tomorrow to discuss the Fed’s plan to police bank pay policies, officials said on Friday. Under a plan recently put forward by the Fed, the central bank would review — and could veto — pay policies that could cause too much risk-taking by bank executives, traders or loan officers.
■INTERNET
Spam king ordered to pay
Spam king Sanford Wallace has been ordered to pay US$711 million in damages for bombarding Facebook members with unwanted messages, the social networking site said on Friday. The award was made at the San Jose District Court on Thursday, according to the announcement. Facebook said Wallace’s e-mails tricked many recipients into giving him their login information, or redirecting them to sites that paid him for each visit. It said Wallace committed 14 million violations of US anti-spam laws. In addition to the damages, Wallace was banned from accessing Facebook and slapped with a criminal contempt of court charge, which means he now faces possible jail time.
■PETROLEUM
Chevron lifted Q3 production
Chevron said on Friday it pumped its way through a weak third quarter, producing more oil as prices recovered from a severe plunge earlier in the year. The second-largest US oil and gas producer boosted revenues by increasing oil production by 11 percent. Its average sale price for crude and natural gas liquids over the past three months was US$62 per barrel, which is better than the previous quarter, but below the US$103 it fetched during the same period last year.
■AVIATION
EVA Air narrows loss
EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空), Taiwan’s second-largest air carrier, reported a nine-month loss that narrowed to NT$3.9 billion (US$120 million), or NT$1.67 a share, from a loss of NT$10.5 billion, or NT$4.65 a share, a year earlier, according to a stock exchange filing on Friday. EVA posted a NT$2.22 billion third-quarter loss compared with NT$4.51 billion a year earlier, while third-quarter sales fell 22 percent from a year earlier to NT$18.7 billion.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS