BUSINESS BRIEFS
State securities regulator named
Advertiser Staff and News Services
Tung Chan, assistant general counsel for New York Life Insurance Co., has been named the state's new commissioner of securities.
Chan will oversee Hawai'i's securities-law regulation, enforcement and education as well as registration of new businesses. Before joining New York Life, she was an associate at Clearly, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. Her background includes clerking for U.S. District Judge David Ezra in 1996.
The post was vacant after former Commissioner Corinna Wong moved to the Mainland, where her husband had accepted a position. Chan will begin work on Monday.
U.S. BEEF IS BACK IN JAPAN EATERIES
TOKYO — Japanese restaurant chain Zenshoku said it will serve U.S. beef starting today, a first among this nation's restaurants since the ban on American beef was lifted last month.
American beef has been trickling into Japan since the easing of the ban, imposed in 2003 because of mad cow disease fears. Many Japanese worry about the safety of U.S. beef, which has yet to be sold at Japanese supermarkets — except for the nation's five Costco stores, run by the Japan unit of U.S. warehouse retailer Costco Wholesale Corp.
BATTERY SAFETY STANDARDS LIKELY
DALLAS — Dell Inc. and Apple Computer Inc., which recalled nearly 6 million laptop batteries between them this month, are among PC makers planning to meet next month to discuss setting design and safety standards for lithium-ion batteries used in portable electronic devices.
The batteries were blamed in rare fires that prompted this month's recalls, the largest electronic recalls involving federal product-safety officials.
The group's critical-parts committee will meet Sept. 13 in San Jose, Calif. Sony Corp., which made the recalled batteries, has not indicated whether it will attend.
