■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.
PLA MANEUVERS: Although Beijing has yet to formally announce military drills, its coast guard vessels have been spotted near and around Taiwan since Friday The Taiwanese military is on high alert and is closely monitoring the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) air and naval deployments after Beijing yesterday reserved seven airspace areas east of its Zhejiang and Fujian provinces through Wednesday. Beijing’s action was perceived as a precursor to a potential third “Joint Sword” military exercise, which national security experts said the PLA could launch following President William Lai’s (賴清德) state visits to the nation’s three Pacific allies and stopovers in Hawaii and Guam last week. Unlike the Joint Sword military exercises in May and October, when Beijing provided detailed information about the affected areas, it
CHINA: The activities come amid speculation that Beijing might launch military exercises in response to Lai’s recent visit to Pacific allies The Ministry of National Defense (MND) yesterday said China had nearly doubled the number of its warships operating around the nation in the previous 24 hours, ahead of what security sources expect would be a new round of war games. China’s military activities come amid speculation Beijing might organize military drills around the nation in response to President William Lai’s (賴清德) recent visit to Pacific allies, including stops in Hawaii and Guam, a US territory. Lai returned from the week-long trip on Friday night. Beijing has held two rounds of war games around Taiwan this year, and sends ships and military planes
Five flights have been arranged to help nearly 2,000 Taiwanese tourists return home from Okinawa after being stranded due to cruise ship maintenance issues, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications announced yesterday. China Airlines Ltd (中華航空), and EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) have arranged five flights with a total of 748 additional seats to transport 1,857 passengers from the MSC Bellissima back to Taiwan, the ministry said. The flights have been scheduled for yesterday and today by the Civil Aviation Administration, with the cruise operator covering all associated costs. The MSC Bellissima, carrying 4,341 passengers, departed from Keelung on Wednesday last week for Okinawa,
US president-elect Donald Trump said he would “never say” if Washington is committed to defending Taiwan from China, but “I would prefer that they do not do it [ an attack],” adding that he has a “good relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). “I never say because I have to negotiate things, right?” Trump said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press host Kristen Welker after saying he would not reveal his incoming administration’s stance on Taiwan’s defense in the event of an attack. Asked the question again, Trump, in a reference to China, said: “I would prefer that they
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