Export

The United States Commerce Department is investigating whether SMIC illegally obtained US tools to make the Kirin 9000S chip. According to Alan Estevez, a senior official in the department, the chip maker potentially broke export rules, but the situation is still being assessed. The announcement comes after a congressional hearing earlier this week and reports that the Biden administration is considering a ban on 4 more chip makers, including Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), Huawei's provider of…

Web novels are a unique form of literature that has been popular on the Chinese internet for much of the last two decades: long stories that are written and posted chapter by chapter every day. Each chapter can be read in less than 10 minutes, but installments will keep being added for months if not years. Readers become avid fans, waiting for the new chapter to come out every day and paying a few cents to access it. While some talented Chinese book authors got their big break by writing web novels, the majority of…

The Nigerian government on Thursday said it is interacting with critical sectors to ensure there was no exportation of Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG), also known as cooking gas. The government said this is part of its effort to tackle the rise in the price of cooking gas in the country. Ekperikpe Ekpo, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas), disclosed this at an internal stakeholders’ workshop in Abuja on Thursday, according to a statement signed by Oluwakemi Ogunmakinwa, deputy director of press and…

The 650,000 barrels per day Dangote Refinery has concluded plans to export its first fuel cargoes, according to a report. The refinery has issued tenders to sell two fuel cargoes for export, Reuters reported Wednesday, quoting trading sources with knowledge of the matter. The first cargo is 65,000 metric tons of low-sulphur straight-run fuel oil, which Dangote has awarded to Trafigura and is due to load at the end of February, three of the sources said. At least one refiner said they had been offered the cargo by…

As BYD continues its dominant global expansion, the EV maker’s latest target is a stone’s throw from the US. BYD is looking to establish an EV plant in Mexico as an “export hub” for the US. After slipping past Tesla in EV sales in the last three months of the year, BYD became the top-selling EV maker globally. BYD is now among the top ten global automakers for the first time. After dominating its home market of China, the company is expanding overseas. The automaker’s exports surged last…

A group of 15 US lawmakers on Thursday urged the commerce department to add TikTok's China-based parent company ByteDance to a government export control list to restrict its access to American software.The lawmakers, led by Republican representative Dan Crenshaw and Democrat Josh Gottheimer, in a letter to commerce secretary Gina Raimondo urged that ByteDance be added to what is known as the "Entity List" in order "to address critical vulnerabilities created by the company's access to US software." Elevate Your Tech…

When a Beijing-based military institute in September published a patent for a new high-performance chip, it offered a glimpse of China's bid to remake the half-trillion dollar global chip market and withstand U.S. sanctions.The People's Liberation Army's (PLA) Academy of Military Sciences had used an open-source standard known as RISC-V to reduce malfunctions in chips for cloud computing and smart cars, the patent filing shows. RISC-V is an instruction set architecture, a computer language used to design anything from…

The Biden administration announced a pause on new gas export projects today, saying it needs to better assess each project’s economic and environmental impact. The decision won’t affect ongoing exports, just pending decisions on liquified natural gas (LNG) exports to countries with which the US has no free trade agreement.“During this period, we will take a hard look at the impacts of LNG exports on energy costs, America’s energy security, and our environment,” Biden said in a statement today. “This pause on new LNG…

Jan. 25, 2024 3 AM PT To the editor: Alabama’s new method of execution — suffocating the condemned with nitrogen — should be interesting to the nearby state of South Carolina. (“Alabama plans to carry out first nitrogen gas execution. How will it work and what are the risks?” Jan. 21)More than 20 members of its state Legislature are making efforts to classify abortion as murder, a crime punishable by death. The method of causing death, however, is a problem. Should they use the electric chair, hanging, the gas chamber…

Skoda India To Export CKD Kits For Kushaq, Slavia Models To Vietnam. (Photo: Skoda)Over 48,000 units of the locally created Kushaq and Slavia models were created at the Pune factory in India.Skoda Auto, the Czech carmaker, declared that in 2023 they had produced over 8.88 lakh vehicles.Of these, 52,000 were made in India. In addition, 48,000 units were created locally in the Pune facility for the Kushaq and Slavia models, and 4,400 units were made at the Aurangabad plant for the Superb, Octavia, and Kodiaq models.This…