■ Internet
Google may watch everyone
The Internet will hold so much digital data in five years that it will be possible to find out what an individual was doing at a specific time and place, an expert said. Nigel Gilbert, a professor heading a Royal Academy of Engineering study into surveillance, said people would be able to sit down and type into Google "what was a particular individual doing at 2:30 yesterday and would get an answer." The answer would come from a range of data, for instance video recordings or databanks which store readings from electronic chips. Such chips embedded in people's clothes could track their movements. He told a privacy conference the Internet would be capable of holding huge amounts of data very cheaply and patterns of information could be extracted very quickly. "Everything can be recorded for ever," he said.
■ Service industry
Investment services boom
Among all the management consulting services in Taiwan, investment consulting services performed the best, largely owing to reviving investor interest in the nation's stock market this year, government officials said. The investment consulting service industry generated total revenue of NT$10.1 billion (US$307 million) for the first eight months of this year, up 29.2 percent year-on-year, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said on Friday. In the first eight months, total revenue of the professional, scientific and technical service industries reached NT$309.23 billion, up 9.3 percent from the same period last year, officials said.
■ Stock markets
LSE proposes Tokyo tie-up
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) has proposed an operational tie-up with its Tokyo counterpart, including the cross-listing of exchange-traded funds, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said yesterday. A senior LSE official presented the plan during a visit to the Tokyo Stock Exchange last month, the newspaper said. The proposal also calls for the exchanges to jointly develop a stock-trading system and take measures to stimulate start-up markets, it said. The TSE, which is also in partnership talks with the New York Stock Exchange, has agreed to consider the proposal, the newspaper said.
■ Retail
Wal-Mart slashes prices
Wal-Mart stepped up its discounting on Friday in advance of the holiday season, announcing deep price cuts on almost 100 electronics products that focused on high definition TVs, cellphones and digital cameras. The news came a day after the world's largest retailer announced disappointing sales for last month and a lackluster outlook for this month. In a release on Thursday, Wal-Mart said it planned to "reinforce Wal-Mart's price leadership position" in such areas as toys and electronics.
■ Automakers
Toyota expects profit surge
Toyota Motor Corp projects a 17 percent rise in operating profit to a record ¥2.2 trillion (US$18.6 billion) for the year to March next year on brisk sales of fuel-efficient cars and a weaker yen, a report said yesterday. It would be the first time that a Japanese company has posted a ¥2 trillion operating profit, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said. Initially, Japan's largest automaker had forecast an operating profit of ¥1.9 trillion, but the weaker yen and robust sales of fuel-efficient cars have helped boost its profit further, the business daily said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last