Xi’s state visit to Myanmar’s purpose-built capital, Naypyidaw, came as Western investors are giving a wide berth to the country due to the Rohingya crisis. A 2017 military crackdown on the minority, which UN investigators called genocide, forced about 740,000 people from western Rakhine State over the border into Bangladesh. Thirty-three agreements were signed yesterday, with Aung San Suu Kyi and Xi seated across from each other on long tables alongside ministers. Details were scant, but among the deals was a concession and shareholders’ agreement on the US$1.3 billion Kyaukhphyu deep-sea port and economic zone, located in a part of Rakhine State left largely unscathed by the 2017 violence. After his arrival on Friday, Xi called the visit a “historical moment” for China-Myanmar relations, state-run newspaper the Global New Light of Myanmar reported.

AP, NEW YORKTechnology unleashed baseball’s era of analytics and now it is holding the sport prisoner. Hinch, Alex Cora and Carlos Beltran are casualties, a triple play of hubris. Video rooms and dugouts are now monitored by Major League Baseball, like proctors pacing an exam room to stifle students’ temptation to cheat. ‘TECH CHALLENGE’“It’s a serious problem for baseball, the merging of technology and an ancient game. Cora had gone on to become Boston’s manager and led the Red Sox to the 2018 World Series championship.

By Hsu Li-chuan and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writerKaohsiung’s E-Da Hospital on Wednesday warned against drinking unboiled or unfiltered water from mountain streams to avoid ingesting parasites, after treating a woman with a leech in her throat. The hospital treated a 60-year-old woman surnamed Shen (沈) who was complaining of feeling “something in her throat” and was coughing blood, said an otorhinolaryngologist at the hospital, Wang Chih-chun (王誌群). The patient, who grows coffee trees in Kaohsiung’s Maolin District (茂林), often washed her face or rinsed her mouth using nearby water sources, Wang said. Shen’s exposure to untreated mountain water might have given the leech an opportunity to enter her body, possibly through the nasal cavity, Wang said. Wang urged people who hike and camp in the mountains to avoid drinking water directly from ponds or streams, and that any food washed with the water should be thoroughly cooked and boiled before ingestion.

ReutersEuropean shares on Friday clocked a record closing high after European Commissioner for Trade Phil Hogan struck a positive tone on talks with Washington and on optimism over signs of resilience in China’s economy. The pan-European STOXX 600 on Friday rose 3.82 points, or 0.9 percent, to 424.36, its best week since Dec. 20 and a jump of 1.2 percent from a close of 419.14 on Jan. 10. It also added to investor optimism after the US and China signed a trade deal earlier in the week. Stocks in Germany, the EU’s largest economy, rose 0.7 percent, with technology stocks serving as the biggest boost. Polish video game developer CD Projekt SA was the biggest loser on the STOXX 600, dropping 5.6 percent after it postponed the release of its widely awaited game Cyberpunk 2077.

The president does not need the opinion of other countries to make plans, Su added. Other countries should not poke their noses into this,” Su said in response to media queries about the report. Su Tseng-chang would stay on as premier, while former premier Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃) would be named legislative speaker and would share the duty of presiding over legislative proceedings with Deputy Legislative Speaker Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌), the report said. The Presidential Office yesterday rejected the China Times’ report. The office would respect the autonomy of the legislature and the caucuses in electing the legislative speaker, Presidential Office spokesman Xavier Chang (張惇涵) said, adding that the report was baseless.

“It’s very hard to be bearish here,” Federated Investors Management senior equity strategist Linda Duessel told Bloomberg TV. The positive energy funneled through to Asia, where most markets ended broadly up. In Taipei, the TAIEX on Friday closed up 23.36 points, or 0.2 percent, at 12,090.29, rising 0.5 percent from a close of 12,024.65 a week earlier. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 on Friday rose 108.13 points, or 0.5 percent, at 24,041.26, a jump of 0.8 percent from 23,850.57 a week earlier. Seoul’s KOSPI on Friday rose 2.52 points, or 0.1 percent, to 2,250.57, surging 2 percent from 2,206.39 a week earlier.

By Chen Yun / Staff reporterWith no Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) heavyweights so far having expressed an interest in becoming party chair following the resignation of Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), some KMT members are calling for Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) to enter the race. Some KMT members have proposed that the KMT Central Standing Committee amend the party’s charter to allow “people from outside the party” to serve as party chair, sources within the party said yesterday. The proposal has gained the backing of 20 committee members and more than 200 party representatives, and is gaining traction among KMT members, the sources added. Wu’s own political ambition has led some members to the misunderstanding that whoever becomes chair has an eye on the party’s presidential nomination, the sources said, adding that having “an outsider” serving as KMT chair could be rationalized if accompanied by a pledge not to contend for the party’s nomination. The KMT rules previously stated that if no candidate secured more than 50 percent of the votes, a second round of voting for party chair would be held, but the rules were changed in 2018 to stipulate that the candidate with the most votes would win.

It would be fair to say that those who accuse Taiwanese police of “reading the water meter” are actually using disinformation to put the police in a difficult position. However, in the post-truth era, all democratic countries are suffering from how fake news uses freedom of speech to undermine democracy. A fair, forthright judicial system is crucial to truly safeguard democracy and soberly diagnose cases of fake news. After investigating cases reported by victims, those cases can then be fairly transferred to judicial institutions for speedy review. Only by doing so can freedom of speech be safeguarded and those responsible for launching fake news attacks be uncovered.

BloombergOil on Friday declined for the second week as signs that supplies remain plentiful offset optimism over the signing of a US-China trade agreement. Futures in New York were little changed, but ended the week 0.9 percent lower. Supplies at the critical commercial storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, rose for the first time in 10 weeks. Oil drilling rose for the first time in four weeks, led by the Permian Basin, indicating that oil supplies are poised for more gains in the near term. West Texas Intermediate futures for delivery next month settled up US$0.02 at US$58.54 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

On on Jan. 17, 1920, the 18th Amendment of the US Constitution came into force, ushering in Prohibition in America. A century later, the country has yet to fully turn the page on that raucous chapter in its history. Back in the day, two large owls adorned the bar of the luxurious Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore. That resulted in a patchwork of laws that sometimes varied from county to county, parish to parish and even from town to town. That is even the case in Moore County, Tennessee, home to the distillery of world famous whiskey producers Jack Daniels.

The shares rallied in the last half an hour of trading to close at US$1,450.16, up 0.8 percent on the day. AN EXCLUSIVE GROUPWith the gain, Alphabet became the newest member of an elite club to trade with a 13-digit market capitalization. Only two other US companies are past that threshold: Apple Inc, valued at about US$1.38 trillion, and Microsoft Corp, at US$1.27 trillion. Globally, the list is topped by Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, which went public last month and has a market capitalization of about US$1.8 trillion. The fifth-largest US company by market capitalization, Facebook Inc, has a valuation of US$632.9 billion.

The venture, in which Hon Hai would hold at most a 40 percent stake, would combine the innovative spirit and strengths of both companies, while focusing on businesses that apply the Internet of Things to the automotive industry, Hon Hai said. Fiat Chrysler, which agreed to merge with Peugeot and Citroen owner Group PSA in October last year, would be in charge of traditional manufacturing. Hon Hai and Fiat Chrysler plan as a first step to manufacture electric vehicles in China for the local market, it said. Hon Hai and Fiat Chrysler are focusing on the Chinese market because of sheer volume, Liu added. “Vertical expertise is key in auto, and so a deal like Fiat Chrysler — if it proves successful — can help unlock doors for Hon Hai, as that would be a strong reference account.”

BloombergThe EU’s new trade chief on Thursday pulled no punches on an inaugural visit to Washington, saying that US President Donald Trump’s tariff threats amount to short-sighted electioneering and warning him about widespread economic damage from protectionism. “It’s short-term thinking,” Hogan said in a separate video interview with Global Counsel Chairman Peter Mandelson, a former EU trade commissioner. Hogan said Trump is misguidedly “obsessed” with a US deficit in goods trade with the bloc and should also take into account services, where the country has a US$60 billion surplus. Altogether, transatlantic trade in goods and services is worth more than US$3 billion a day, according to Hogan. “We reject the US labeling the EU as a security risk in order to justify the imposition on tariffs,” Hogan said.

By Natasha Li / Staff reporterMing Rong Yuan Business Co Ltd (銘榮元實業), which makes heavy construction equipment, at Kaohsiung Harbor yesterday unveiled its first pin pile for Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower, 台電) phase 1 offshore wind farm project. Measuring 66.5m in length and weighing about 250 tonnes, the pin pile, which is a base for a wind turbine, is the first of its kind made in Taiwan, Ming Rong Yuan said, adding that it closely followed European standards in the manufacturing process. The company is to provide four pin piles by March to Taipower through the latter’s engineering, procurement and construction contractor, Luxembourg-based marine construction company Jan De Nul Group. Ming Rong Yuan has also set its sights on international markets, with plans to manufacture 50 to 60 pin piles by the end of the year, projecting sales of several billion New Taiwan dollars. Last month, the Ministry of Economic Affairs approved a Ming Rong Yuan investment of NT$1.5 billion to build a factory in Pingtung’s Xinyuan Township (新園).

The company said the initiative would by 2050 remove from the environment all the carbon emissions it has created since it was founded in 1975. “The scientific consensus is clear — the world today is confronted with an urgent carbon crisis,” Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said while unveiling the initiative. However, efforts to reduce the impact of carbon emissions have been rarer. The company would begin publishing annual reports on carbon emissions, and encouraged other companies to do the same. Internally, it has put a price on carbon emissions associated with products or services, and it urged others to do likewise.