Next year’s G20 hosts Canada and South Korea are working closely together on a blueprint for a sustained global economic recovery, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday.
“Economies are showing signs of stabilization, but this recovery is fragile. It is a recovery that wrong choices could quickly stall, or even reverse,” Harper said in a speech to South Korea’s parliament. “The livelihoods of families all over the world hang in the balance.”
Leaders of the G20 countries agreed at their September summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to meet again next year in Canada in June and in South Korea in November.
Harper, who arrived in Seoul on Sunday for a two-day visit, was to hold talks later with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
The prime minister said Ottawa and Seoul were “renewing strong relations” while planning for the leadership role they will play as G20 hosts.
“For Canada and Korea, this is a unique opportunity and a unique responsibility. We must lead the way. We must build upon the work done in Washington, London and Pittsburgh,” he said.
The prime minister stressed the importance of forming “prudent regulation” of the global financial sector and reform of international financial institutions.
He said, however, that global trade must not waver.
G20 nations must draw up a credible exit strategy from stimulus packages and return the world economy to a path of sustainable growth, he said.
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