Hundreds of car lovers rallied yesterday in Russia’s far eastern city of Vladivostok in ongoing protests against the government’s decision to raise tariffs on used foreign cars.
Up to 1,000 people converged on Vladivostok’s central square, brandishing banners against tariffs and high fuel prices and with slogans like “Government to resign” and “Putin, fight oligarchs, not people.”
Unlike earlier protests, the rally lacked an official organizer, its address and demands being spread by Internet, telephone messages and word of mouth.
“We are fighting not because we want a new car, but because there is no work here except selling used cars. Thousands will go broke and that is people between 40 and 60 years of age. They’re too old to learn another job,” said one of the protesters, Nikolai.
“The region is underdeveloped, people flee because there are no jobs — and instead of creating jobs and enterprises, the government hands us charity-like loans to buy Russian cars,” said another protester, Galina.
“Cutting down this business, this infrastructure, is to create a domino effect. Everything will go down and it will end up in crime and alcoholism,” said Vyacheslav Lysakov, the head of the car-lovers’ group Freedom of Choice.
“Every other family is directly or indirectly involved in the car business,” he said.
Police seized 22 protesters, citing violations of the law on demonstrating, police spokeswoman Irina Syrova was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
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