■ TAIEX rally hits a snag
Shares snapped a winning streak yesterday by falling slightly after Wall Street's overnight slide.
The TAIEX dropped 53.21 points, or 0.71 percent, to 7,444.94, its first decline after gaining 5.1 percent over 10 sessions.
The fall followed Wall Street's worst day in more than four months. Overnight, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 158.46 points, or 1.29 percent, to 12,121.71.
Turnover was NT$113.48 billion (US$3.47 billion). Decliners led risers 822 to 390, with 160 stocks unchanged.
■ CPC hikes prices
State-run Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC, 中油) announced yesterday that it was raising wholesale gasoline prices by NT$1.1 per liter and diesel prices by NT$1.2 per liter effective midnight.
The adjusted retail price for 98-octane unleaded gasoline is NT$28.7, 95-octane unleaded gasoline is NT$27.2, 92-octane unleaded gasoline is NT$26.5 and top-grade diesel oil is NT$23.3 per liter, CPC said in a statement.
The adjusted range is calculated by the price change of the West Texas Intermediate crude over the past week in New York trade, which rose 7.3 percent from the previous week, CPC said.
CPC has adopted the floating price adjustment measure for 10 weeks to reflect oil costs.
■ NT dollar gains strength
The New Taiwan dollar rose NT$0.029 to close at NT$32.675 on the Taipei Forex Inc yesterday on continued foreign fund inflows.
Turnover was US$906 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