■ TAIEX falls 1.3%
Share prices closed 1.3 percent lower yesterday, with investors unsettled by the latest hardline Chinese remarks over any push by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) towards independence, dealers said. The TAIEX lost 84.62 points at 6,460.01, on turnover of NT$87.27 billion (US$2.69 billion). The financial sector was down 2.09 percent and electronics lost 1.34 percent. "The market came down sharply as a sell-off in financials picked up steam towards the close," said Fubon Securities Investment Services Co (富邦投顧) manager Daniel Tseng (曾建詮). Given forecasts by some foreign institutions of a further correction to 6,000 points, the heavily weighted tech stocks saw steep losses, he said. "The market may or may not go that low but there is no denying most market participants believe shares are more likely to come down further rather than go up any time soon."
■ Science council lists priorities
Nanotechnology, telecommunications and biotechnology will become the government's priorities in scientific development, National Science Council Minister Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) said yesterday. "We have a lot of nanotechnological researchers in Taiwan now, but we need breakthroughs to build our own technological edge rather than following others' footsteps in this field," Chen said. Telecommunications, including Internet and wireless communications, will have bright prospects in light of the government's "e-Taiwan" program which utilizes the Internet to speed up government operations, Chen said. The council is working on a program to store hospitals' case histories, including patients' test results, in a databank accessible to hospitals throughout the country. In the field of biotechnology, Chen said the focus should be the study of genomes and the development of genetic diagnosis.
■ Inbound investment rises
Inbound investment totaled US$4.23 billion last year, up 7 percent from 2004, according to statistics released yesterday by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics. Investment from the Caribbean topped the list of inbound investments at US$1.09 billion, posting a year-on-year growth of 22 percent, followed by the US at US$800 million and Japan at US$720 million, the statistics indicate. The government approved US$8.45 billion worth of outbound investments last year, which represented a year-on-year decrease of 18.1 percent. China remained the top destination for Taiwanese investment last year, attracting a total of US$6.01 billion, down 18.1 percent from 2004's level.
■ Seoul seeks chip talks
South Korea said yesterday that it had sought consultations with Japan over a dispute about computer chip tariffs, the first step in possibly bringing the case to the WTO for settlement. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a statement that South Korea sent a letter to Japan via its representative in Geneva seeking the bilateral consultations. Japan said in January it would slap import duties of 27.2 percent on DRAM chips made by Hynix Semiconductor in retaliation for alleged government subsidies. The tariff is the first Japan has imposed to counter alleged subsidies by a foreign government and the first such duties on high-tech products.
■ NT dollar gains
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against its US counterpart yesterday, rising NT$0.066 to close at NT$32.434 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$851 million.
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