Shares close up
Shares closed 0.35 percent higher yesterday after late profit-taking capped an early technical rebound driven by Wall Street's overnight gains, dealers said.
The TAIEX added 27.62 points at 7,903.04, on turnover of NT$88.58 billion (US$2.68 billion).
Decliners led gains 708 to 452, with 213 stocks unchanged.
"Investors are acting conservatively ahead of the tax season," said Stanley Hsu of First Taisec Securities (一銀證券).
Hsu tipped the trading range for today within a 7,850 to 7,950 band.
Uni-President rebuts report
Uni-President Enterprises Corp (統一企業), the nation's largest food conglomerate, yesterday rebutted a local Chinese-language report that said it had decided to invest less than 20 percent of shareholding in China-based NissinHualong Food Co (華龍日清), China's second-largest instant noodle manufacturer.
In a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange, Uni-President said negotiations were ongoing and the two companies had not yet agreed on any specific investment projects.
Its board meeting on March 9 only passed a resolution authorizing Uni-President's wholly owned President Enterprises (China) Investment Co to deal with such investments, the statement read.
Statistics showed that China has replaced Japan to become the world's largest instant noodle market.
TAITRA session about car parts
The quasi-official Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) is inviting local manufacturers to take part in a consultation session in Taipei with the US-based Magna Donnelly Co on auto parts and components procurement, a TAITRA official said on Tuesday.
The official said a delegation of Magna Donnelly, whose annual procurement amount stands at US$22.81 billion, is scheduled to hold procurement meetings on Monday with local manufacturers and suppliers at the Taipei World Trade Center.
The official said Magna Donnelly is a high-end auto parts manufacturer, with its products including enhanced mirrors, window systems, car electronic spare parts and door closure systems, adding that the firm has 26 service centers around the world.
Traditional media losing out
US news-seekers are increasingly turning to Internet search engines, video clips and gossip-slingers to sate their curiosity about current events, a study released on Tuesday said.
Visits to the top 10 news and media Web sites in the US went down by nearly four percent over the past year as people turned increasingly to "non-traditional news websites," Hitwise online intelligence service reported.
Meanwhile, Web sites that "aggregate" news stories by harvesting them online registered increases in visits during the year ending in March, Hitwise said.
Yahoo News ranks as the top news Web site, with slightly more than 6.5 percent of the market.
NT dollar loses ground
The New Taiwan dollar neared the lowest in six months on speculation that investors sold the currency to put money in higher-yielding securities overseas.
"The Taiwan dollar is very weak," said Craig Chan, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc's Asian currency strategist in Hong Kong. "It's still being used as a funding currency."
The NT dollar fell NT$0.01 to close at NT$33.286 against the US dollar, Taipei Forex Inc said.
Demand for the currency was limited on speculation that an inflation report this week will back the case for the central bank to keep borrowing costs unchanged.
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