■AUTOMOBILES
Toyota to keep it in family
The grandson of Toyota Motor Corp’s founder will take the helm of the automaker in June, newspapers said yesterday. Toyota’s top executives will hold a board meeting as early as Monday to endorse the appointment of Akio Toyoda, said the Nikkei daily, a top business newspaper, citing no sources. Apart from the Nikkei daily, Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper and the Mainichi daily said in their evening editions yesterday that Toyoda will take over the top job in June. It will mark the first time in 14 years that a member of Toyota’s founding family will run the auto giant. Neither of the papers cited any sources.
■CHINA
Plan receives revamp
China has updated an ambitious blueprint to aggressively revamp the country’s key manufacturing region — a plan that has already helped cause many low-end factories to move or shut down. The sweeping new plan, released on Thursday in Beijing, covers the next 12 years and targets the booming Pearl River Delta in Guangdong Province. The National Development and Reform Commission says the general goal is to transform the region into a base for advanced manufacturing, innovation and heavy industry. The plan calls for the creation of 10 China-based multinationals, each with annual sales of US$20 billion by 2020. It will be home to two to three big automakers with output worth more than 100 billion yuan (US$14.6 billion) each by 2020.
■TELECOMS
Palm Inc unveils smartphone
Palm Inc, a pioneer in handheld devices but suffering hard times lately, unveiled a touch-screen smartphone on Thursday that impressed reviewers and sent its stock price soaring. The Palm Pre, released at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, runs on a new operating system, the Palm webOS mobile platform, developed by the company. Palm said the Pre would be available through US carrier Sprint by this summer. It did not reveal the price for the device, which notably allows users to move seamlessly from one application to another like with a desktop computer and run multiple applications at the same time.
■TELECOMS
Skype turns to cellphones
Skype, which brought cheap and free calls to the Internet, is doing the same for cellphones. The Web-based voice and text messaging service owned by auction giant eBay announced on Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show that it was bringing its Internet communications software to cellphones. It said it had developed a “lite” version of Skype that can be downloaded for free to more than 100 models of Java-enabled cellphones or those using Google’s open-source Android platform. The T-Mobile G1 runs Android software, while phones from LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsugn and Sony Ericsson are Java-enabled.
■COMPUTERS
Dell to cut Irish workforce
US computer maker Dell Inc announced on Thursday it will slash its Irish work force and shift its European manufacturing operations to Poland in a move certain to undermine Ireland’s recession-hit economy. Dell is Ireland’s second-largest corporate employer, its biggest exporter and in recent years has contributed about 5 percent to the national GDP. Economists warn that each Dell job underpins another four to five jobs in Ireland. Managers told its approximately 4,300 Irish employees that 1,900 of them would lose their jobs between this April and January next year.
STILL COMMITTED: The US opposes any forced change to the ‘status quo’ in the Strait, but also does not seek conflict, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US President Donald Trump’s administration released US$5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, including US$870 million in security exemptions for programs in Taiwan, a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters showed. Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, halting funding for everything from programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases to providing shelters for millions of displaced people across the globe. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said that all foreign assistance must align with Trump’s “America First” priorities, issued waivers late last month on military aid to Israel and Egypt, the
France’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and accompanying warships were in the Philippines yesterday after holding combat drills with Philippine forces in the disputed South China Sea in a show of firepower that would likely antagonize China. The Charles de Gaulle on Friday docked at Subic Bay, a former US naval base northwest of Manila, for a break after more than two months of deployment in the Indo-Pacific region. The French carrier engaged with security allies for contingency readiness and to promote regional security, including with Philippine forces, navy ships and fighter jets. They held anti-submarine warfare drills and aerial combat training on Friday in
COMBAT READINESS: The military is reviewing weaponry, personnel resources, and mobilization and recovery forces to adjust defense strategies, the defense minister said The military has released a photograph of Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) appearing to sit beside a US general during the annual Han Kuang military exercises on Friday last week in a historic first. In the photo, Koo, who was presiding over the drills with high-level officers, appears to be sitting next to US Marine Corps Major General Jay Bargeron, the director of strategic planning and policy of the US Indo-Pacific Command, although only Bargeron’s name tag is visible in the seat as “J5 Maj General.” It is the first time the military has released a photo of an active
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
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