Skyrocketing energy costs have fueled fresh interest in the four-day workweek across the US as a means to help workers as well as employers cope with the surge.
In Birmingham, Alabama, city officials decided to implement a four-day week starting on July 1 for some 2,400 municipal employees and later in the year for around 1,000 police and firefighters.
The move, allowing employees to work four 10-hour days, may save US$500,000 to US$1 million annually in fuel costs alone for the employees, said April Odom, director of communications for the mayor’s office in the city of 242,000 people.
Some 1,600km north in Maynard, Minnesota, the MACCRAY School District will start a four-day week for the upcoming school year, saving around 1 percent of its budget, mainly from transportation costs.
The shift will mean 149 school days instead of 172, but each day will include an extra 65 minutes for instruction, MACCRAY school superintendent Greg Schmidt said.
Gasoline costs have surged to around US$1.06 per liter in much of the US, up some 30 percent from a year ago, the American Automobile Association said.
The compressed four-day week is among many options being used by employees and employers in the US, including telecommuting and carpooling, to keep transportation costs down.
The US government for years has allowed some employees to work a compressed schedule.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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