As part of its global NT$6.6 billion package, Citibank Taiwan (花旗銀行) yesterday donated NT$3.5 million to the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation (婦女救援基金會) in a bid to help teenage girls cultivate appropriate attitudes toward money and wealth management.
According to the foundation's survey, teenage girls aged between 15 and 18 are becoming increasingly materialistic, with 55 percent of respondents choosing money as the most important factor in their lives, while only 40.5 percent chose family attachments. Sixty-one percent chose bosom friends, while 57 percent chose school grades.
Over 90 percent of the teenage girls owned cellular phones, while 67 percent had personal computers, both of which had been paid for primarily by the girls' parents.
The survey also found that 32 girl teenagers out of a total of 420 respondents from Taipei's Ximending district had received scooters as gifts from their peers -- a sign that teenage consumers may spend more than expected.
As credit-card holders, most teenage girls still can't afford to pay their own bills, since 81 percent of parents will pay for their outstanding debts, the survey said.
As much as 90 percent of teenage cardholders, therefore, are unaware of the high interest payments accrued by revolving credit balance, the survey concluded.
Chan Tze-ching (
Taiwan's upscale credit-card market grew steadily last year. Total credit-card transactions rose to a record NT$999 billion last year, up 14 percent from NT$874 billion in 2002, according to statistics provided by the Bureau of Monetary Affairs.
Chinatrust Commercial Bank (
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained