EMPLOYMENT
Japan jobless rate holds
Japan’s jobless rate held steady in January, but consumer spending fell from a year ago, the government said yesterday, underscoring the fragility of its economic recovery as a political battle rages over the next national budget. The country’s jobless rate stood at 4.9 percent in January, unchanged from December. The seasonally adjusted figure indicates a recovery from the recent downturn, when it crept as high as 5.4 percent in 2009, and matched an average of economist forecasts by the Kyodo news agency. Consumer spending fell 1 percent in January from a year earlier.
VIETNAM
Electricity prices increase
Vietnam yesterday raised electricity prices by 15 percent as data showed the country’s inflation soared further last month. “The decision to raise the price of electricity immediately entered into force this Tuesday, March 1,” an official from the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade told reporters. He declined to be identified. The electricity price hike follows an 18 percent increase in gasoline prices last week, a move widely expected after Vietnam devalued its currency last month for the fourth time since late 2009, pushing up the cost of imported fuel.
SOUTH KOREA
Surplus beats forecast
South Korea posted a higher-than-expected trade surplus of US$2.85 billion last month, data showed yesterday, with solid export gains outweighing rising prices for imported oil and other commodities. The preliminary figures show Asia’s fourth-largest economy remains resilient despite downside risks from overseas. The surplus was much larger than the US$1.11 billion forecast by economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires. Exports last month rose 17.9 percent from a year earlier to US$38.96 billion, while imports increased 16.3 percent to US$36.11 billion.
ITALY
Gazprom raises supplies
Russia’s biggest energy company, Gazprom, stepped up gas supplies to Italy to 2.5 times normal levels after Italy’s gas supplies from Libya were cut off, a source in Gazprom told Reuters on Monday. “Gazprom increased gas supply to Italy up to 2.5 times the normal level last week after stoppage of the Greenstream,” the source said. Italy’s Eni said on Tuesday last week it shut the Greenstream pipe that carries Libyan gas into Sicily and said the next day it would increase flows from the north.
INTERNET
Gmail to be restored
Google said Monday it expected to restore all Gmail accounts after a bug in a storage software update wiped out the e-mail messages of a small number of users of the free Internet service over the weekend. However, because the backup messages are stored on tape, it takes longer to get them back into people’s Gmail accounts, the company said. Google said that 0.02 percent of the users of the free Web-based e-mail service had been affected by the problem, fewer than previously reported.
COMPUTERS
McAfee deal complete: Intel
US computer chip giant Intel said on Monday that it has completed its US$7.68 billion acquisition of computer security firm McAfee. Intel said that with the completion of the deal, McAfee becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel. McAfee will continue to sell security products and services under its own brand. Intel announced its plan to purchase McAfee in August.
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