INDUSTRY
Japanese output grows
Japanese industrial production rose for a third straight month in January, as the country’s companies gained confidence in the global recovery, the government said on Monday. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said factory output rose 2.4 percent from December. Transport equipment, general machinery, plus iron and steel were the major contributors to the gains. The figure was below an average market forecast for a 3.8 percent rise by Kyodo news agency and a forecast for a 5.7 percent increase in the government’s industrial production survey last month.
MANUFACTURING
S Korea confidence rising
South Korean manufacturers’ confidence rose to a five-month high as an economic recovery improved their sales outlook. An index measuring expectations for this month climbed to 96 from 91 for last month, the Bank of Korea said in a statement yesterday. A measure of non-manufacturing companies’ expectations rose to 85 from 84. The survey was conducted from Feb. 14 to Feb. 21 and was based on responses from 1,583 manufacturers and 860 non-manufacturers.
FINANCE
ASX suspended over glitch
Trade on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) was suspended yesterday afternoon because of a technical problem, a spokeswoman said. Market operator ASX lost an estimated A$2 billion (US$2.03 billion) in turnover from the stoppage, Dow Jones Newswires said. “At 2:48pm, the market was halted,” the ASX spokeswoman said.
FINANCE
Thai inflation downplayed
Accelerating inflation in Thailand shouldn’t “prompt further increases in interest rates because inflation is being fueled by higher prices rather than increased demand,” said Arkhom Termpittayapaisith, secretary-general of the National Economic and Social Development Board. After deducting inflation, wages have increased 2 percent this year, he said. GDP rose 1.2 percent from the previous three months, compared with a revised 0.3 percent decline in the third quarter.
MEDIA
Asahi English going to Web
Japan’s Asahi Shimbun daily said yesterday it would cease the English-language print supplement it has published in the International Herald Tribune and instead focus on providing digital content. In a message to its IHT edition readers, the newspaper said it would expand English-language content now available on electronic readers and smartphones such as Amazon’s Kindle, Apple’s iPad and iPhone and the Sony Reader. The Asahi — a liberal-leaning daily with a circulation of almost 8 million in its Japanese-language version — said in its message that “far from being the end, this is a new beginning for us.”
AUTOMOBILES
Court rules against Mazda
A Japanese court has ordered automaker Mazda to pay ¥63 million (US$770,000) in damages to the parents of an employee who it says committed suicide over depression from overwork. The Kobe District Court ruled yesterday that the 25-year-old Mazda worker became depressed from overwork and that led to his suicide in 2007. Mazda said it was regrettable the court had rejected its assertion denying the death was work-related.
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