■ Telecoms
Orascom may boost stake
Orascom Telecom Holding SAE, the Middle East's largest mobile-phone operator by subscriptions, may boost its stake in Hutchison Telecommunications International Ltd (和記電訊) by 3.3 percent, chief executive officer Naguib Sawiris said on Saturday. Orascom, which agreed last December to buy a 19.3 percent stake in Hutchison for US$1.3 billion, wants to merge with the Asian telecommunications company, Sawiris said. Hutchison is a unit of Hutchison Whampoa Ltd (和記黃埔), which is owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠). Sawiris is seeking to expand in Asia and Africa to make Orascom one of the world's 10 largest telecommunications companies.
■ Automobiles
VW `planning price cut'
Volkswagen, which is at odds with unions over high labor costs and over-staffing, is planning to cut the price of one of its volume cars and introduce a Brazilian-made model, an industry newspaper, Automobilwoche, said on Saturday. It said the company's head of brands, Wolfgang Bernhard, proposed to cut the cost of manufacturing the Polo, by 2,000 euros (US$2,500) per vehicle from 2008. The weekly said he also wanted to offer Europeans a no-frills model, the Fox, which is currently produced in Brazil. Volkswagen declined to respond, saying it did not comment on speculation about models. The company also partly denied a report in a news weekly, Der Spiegel, that 30,000, not 20,000 jobs in Germany, might be eliminated as Volkswagen raises productivity. VW's head of personnel, Horst Neumann, said through a spokesman he had not spoken of any specific number. The spokesman declined to say which number was correct.
■ Banking
Lawmakers urge revisions
Japanese ruling and opposition lawmakers urged the Bank of Japan yesterday to introduce asset disclosure rules after the central bank chief admitted having kept a scandal-tainted investment. "They should revise their internal regulations" on asset disclosure, said Toranosuke Katayama, a senior official of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party. "I think at least assets held by a governor of the Bank of Japan must be disclosed," Katayama said. Embattled central bank chief Toshihiko Fukui said on Friday he made millions of yen in profits from an investment in a scandal-tainted fund that has triggered calls for his resignation. Fukui, who first made the investment just before taking office, pledged to report precise figures by tomorrow. Fukui, who was then in the private sector, had invested in the fund of Yoshiaki Murakami, a former bureaucrat who became an activist for shareholder rights.
■ Banking
Japanese looking to Islam
Japan will study Islamic financial practices in a bid to attract Middle Eastern oil money, a daily said yesterday. The government-backed Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) has formed a four-man advisory board of Islamic legal scholars the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said. JBIC will also study Islamic-style finance in a tie-up with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp, Mizuho Corporate Bank and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, the business daily said. The aim is to help Japanese private financial institutions enter the Islamic financial market, Nihon Keizai said.
ENDEAVOR MANTA: The ship is programmed to automatically return to its designated home port and would self-destruct if seized by another party The Endeavor Manta, Taiwan’s first military-specification uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) tailor-made to operate in the Taiwan Strait in a bid to bolster the nation’s asymmetric combat capabilities made its first appearance at Kaohsiung’s Singda Harbor yesterday. Taking inspiration from Ukraine’s navy, which is using USVs to force Russia’s Black Sea fleet to take shelter within its own ports, CSBC Taiwan (台灣國際造船) established a research and development unit on USVs last year, CSBC chairman Huang Cheng-hung (黃正弘) said. With the exception of the satellite guidance system and the outboard motors — which were purchased from foreign companies that were not affiliated with Chinese-funded
PERMIT REVOKED: The influencer at a news conference said the National Immigration Agency was infringing on human rights and persecuting Chinese spouses Chinese influencer “Yaya in Taiwan” (亞亞在台灣) yesterday evening voluntarily left Taiwan, despite saying yesterday morning that she had “no intention” of leaving after her residence permit was revoked over her comments on Taiwan being “unified” with China by military force. The Ministry of the Interior yesterday had said that it could forcibly deport the influencer at midnight, but was considering taking a more flexible approach and beginning procedures this morning. The influencer, whose given name is Liu Zhenya (劉振亞), departed on a 8:45pm flight from Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) to Fuzhou, China. Liu held a news conference at the airport at 7pm,
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 —
RSS