EMPLOYMENT
Furlough numbers decline
The number of furloughed workers dropped by 10 percent to 1,581 in the past two weeks, according to statistics released by the Council of Labor Affairs yesterday. As of Tuesday, workers from 33 companies were in an agreement with their employers to take unpaid leave, with 1,252 of them currently on furlough, the figures showed. The number represents a decrease from April 15, when 1,766 workers from 35 companies had agreed to furlough arrangements with their employers, with 1,447 of them currently on unpaid leave at the time.
HOUSING
Taipower denies allegations
State-owned Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) yesterday said that it did not extract groundwater at New Taipei City’s (新北市) Taishan (泰山), Wugu, (五股) or Sinjhuang (新莊) districts while carrying out a reconstruction project at its Taishan electrical substation, denying accusations that the work loosened the soil bases of houses in the area. Taipower issued the statement after Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) yesterday requested the company to repair damaged houses near the substation and take responsibility for a road collapse in Taishan in 2010.
ELECTRONICS
Smartphone shipments rise
Worldwide smartphone shipments increased steadily in the first quarter of this year, according to a recent report DRAMexchange, which said 216.4 million smartphones were shipped in the first three months of the year, up 9.4 percent from the previous quarter. Global smartphone shipments have been increasing every quarter, despite seasonal changes since early last year, the report 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],”
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