■ China Airlines to hire staff
China Airlines (華航) said it plans to hire 120 new flight attendants as it expands its fleet and services. The planned recruitment will increase the number of the airline's flight attendants by 5 percent to about 2,320, according to a statement from the company. China Airlines last month said it raised NT$10 billion (US$319 million) through loans from 12 banks to help pay for new aircraft. The carrier will receive 10 new planes this year.
■ Brock to take council post
Former US trade representative William Brock has accepted the US-Taiwan Business Council's offer to become chairman of the organization, council officials said yesterday. Brock will replace William Cohen, who has tendered his resignation, the officials said. The US-Taiwan Business Council, established in 1976, is a private organization promoting trade and business relationships between the US and Taiwan. Brock, currently a board member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, had served as a House representative, senator and national chairman of the Republican Party before he was appointed US trade representative by then US president Ronald Reagan in 1981. He was secretary of labor during Reagan's second term.
■ Yuan speculation boosts NT
The New Taiwan dollar rose on speculation China is closer to easing its fixed exchange rate after Hong Kong fine-tuned its own peg. The NT dollar rose NT$0.083 to close at NT$31.30 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy