TAIEX rises 0.72 percent
The TAIEX closed up 0.72 percent yesterday, rebounding from losses in the previous session as investors took hints from the gains posted by other regional markets, dealers said.
The TAIEX rose 58.58 points to 8,158.33, after fluctuating between 8,134.30 and 8,197.82, on turnover of NT$150.14 billion (US$4.74 billion). The market opened up 0.63 percent and gained momentum as buying focused on companies with closer business ties to China, dealers said.
A total of 2,448 stocks closed up and 1,416 down, while 370 remained unchanged.
Taipower reduces carbon
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) said on Thursday that its 10-year effort to develop wind power has helped to significantly reduce carbon emissions in the country.
Taipower’s 130 wind power units that were installed over the last decade have generated 1.44 billion kWh of electricity and reduced carbon emissions by as much as 900,000 tonnes, the state-owned company said in a statement.
The company plans to install another 162 wind power generators by next year, which would have a total capacity of 826 million kWh of electricity annually and would cut carbon emissions by 505,000 tonnes per year, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ State Enterprise Commission.
MOEA eyes investment summit
The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said on Wednesday it has scheduled an investment summit on Tuesday to discuss business opportunities following the implementation of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA).
In the upcoming investment forum at the Taipei International Convention Center, the ministry will invite representatives from the government, the business sector and academic circles to discuss the subject. Speakers will include Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥).
Shih will unveil the results of the government’s aggressive efforts to encourage foreign companies to invest in Taiwan, and he will preside over a ceremony where foreign investors, Taiwanese businessmen operating overseas and Chinese investors are expected to sign letters of intent to invest.
Yahoo gets a revamp
Yahoo Inc’s coming attractions include facelifts for its e-mail service and Internet search results.
The changes outlined on Thursday are part of Yahoo’s latest attempt to lure back Web surfers who have been spending more of their time hanging out at Internet hot spots such as Facebook and leaning more heavily on Google Inc’s e-mail and search services.
The e-mail upgrade is supposed to make Yahoo’s inbox twice as fast. It will also enable users to send the short messages known as “tweets” directly to their Twitter accounts from the mail service.
The new features will be available sometime this fall.
Microsoft phone is app-ready
Microsoft Corp has taken another step toward a holiday release for its next generation of smart phones.
The software maker isn’t giving an exact launch date for the Windows Phone 7, but the company says the tools programmers will use to build Windows Phone 7 applications are complete.
It says developers can start submitting apps to Microsoft for approval next month. Microsoft is an underdog in the modern smart phone market, given Apple Inc and Google Inc’s head start.
NT dollar up against greenback
The New Taiwan dollar rose against the US dollar yesterday, up NT$0.061 to close at NT$31.739.
Turnover totaled US$664 million during the trading session.
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