FSC inks international deals
The nation's financial regulator, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), yesterday signed memoranda of understanding with the Securities Exchange Board of India and Jordan Securities Commission to enhance cooperation on securities supervision.
FSC Chairman Hu Sheng-cheng (胡勝正) inked the memoranda at the 32nd annual meeting of the International Organization of Securities Commissions in Mumbai, India, an FSC press statement said.
This brought the number of the FSC's bilateral cooperation agreements up from 27 to 29, it said.
The FSC has signed similar memoranda with financial supervisory bodies in the US, Japan and Europe.
ITRI unveils new security robot
Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) has developed a new security robot in collaboration with Shin Kong Security Co (新光保全), an ITRI spokesman said yesterday.
The SeQ-1 robot will soon join the national security system, the spokesman said, adding that the robot's name refers to its security role, question and answer function and cute appearance.
According to the spokesman, the SeQ-1 robot has a futuristic external form, an agile head that can turn easily, and large LED eyes that turn on automatically in the dark.
ITRI integrated an "environment security" system into SeQ-1's platform system, which enables the robot to have immediate interaction with security monitoring systems and marks major progress over foreign security robots, the spokesman said.
Baur eyes sports products
Representatives from Baur Group, one of Germany's top five mail-order companies, will be present at the Taipei World Trade Center today for a product show on fitness equipment. The company is visiting the Taipei International Sporting Goods Show with the intention of procuring fitness products including treadmills, weight lifting equipment and exercise bikes, from Taiwanese suppliers, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (外貿協會, TAITRA) said in a statement.
Baur has a 10 percent share of the German market for fitness equipment and purchases 30 percent of its products directly from vendors, TAITRA said.
Rainer Hempfling, Baur's procurement manager, will speak at a 1pm seminar on the company's procurement strategy.
Taiwan proposes tariff cut
Taiwan has officially proposed to the WTO to slash tariffs on sports equipment, bicycles and related parts to zero among some member countries within five years, a CNA report said yesterday.
Taiwan is the third-largest exporter of sports equipment, after China and the US, the report said. Taiwan is also the second-largest exporter of bicycles and related parts, it said.
The proposal to cancel tariffs on 28 sports products, including tennis bats, fishing tackle, sailing vessels, balls and golf clubs, has received the support of Japan, Singapore, the US, Norway and Switzerland, CNA said.
Singapore, Switzerland, Japan and Thailand have joined Taiwan in the discussion to cut tariffs, the report said.
As trade of the products among participant countries must account for 90 percent of the volume of world trade for the proposal to be effective, the attitude of China, the top exporter of the products, is key, the report said.
NT dollar loses ground
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.007 to close at NT$33.095 on turnover of US$1.004 billion.
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