ELECTRONICS
Intel plant hit by toxic leak
A nitrogen gas leak at Intel Corp’s chipmaking plant in Chandler, Arizona, on Saturday morning sent 11 people to the hospital with skin and eye irritation symptoms, a local official said. Forty-three people were treated following the discovery of a hazardous material leak, Chandler Fire Department spokesman Tom Dwiggins said. Dwiggins said all of the injuries were minor and not life-threatening, and those sent to the hospital went for precautionary reasons. Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said a single manufacturing tool was the source of the leak, and has been shut down. Operations at the facility are continuing and the company will investigate the cause of the leak, he added.
REAL ESTATE
Prices rise in UK capital
Prime central London property prices increased last month and are almost 60 percent higher than the market low in 2009, according to real-estate broker Knight Frank LLP. Residential prices rose by 0.4 percent last month and have appreciated 3.7 percent so far this year, according to data compiled by the London-based firm. The strongest price growth is in the bracket below £1 million (US$1.5 million), where prices are up by 6.6 percent this year. While demand for prime real estate remains strong, higher taxes in that segment have been relatively beneficial for lower-priced property, Knight Frank said.
DUBAI
Firms eye budget hotel plan
Emaar Properties PJSC, owner of The Address five-star hotel brand, and Meraas Holding plan to start an “affordable” hotel chain to cater to the growing demand for thriftier lodgings. The chain, to be called “Dubai Inn,” will serve a market driven partly by the growth of low-cost airlines and planned theme parks in the United Arab Emirates’ second-biggest sheikhdom, the companies said in a joint statement on Saturday. The country needs to augment supply of affordable rooms as the local market is dominated by five-star hotels, which account for nearly 62 percent of branded inventory in the city, the companies said. Dubai is bidding to host the World EXPO in 2020.
INVESTMENT
Kuwaiti fund targets UK
Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA), the country’s sovereign wealth fund, doubled investments in the UK over the past 10 years to more than US$24 billion. Investment in Britain was “across all asset classes, sectors and industries,” KIA managing director Bader al-Saad said in a speech in London on Friday. Kuwait Investment Office, the KIA’s London-based investment arm, now manages more than US$120 billion globally compared with US$27 billion 10 years ago. The KIA, which has about US$342 billion of assets according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute in California, holds stakes in Daimler AG and BP PLC.
MINING
Prices spark Guyana plea
Guyana’s mining industry is asking the government of the South American country to take emergency measures amid falling gold prices. Miners Association spokesman Colin Sparman said on Saturday the group is seeking government subsidies and a cut in import taxes on items such as machinery and fuel. He said members are to meet with state mining officials on Thursday. Gold surpassed sugar as Guyana’s top export last year, generating more than US$1 billion in annual revenue. However, the price of gold has been dropping, falling below US$1,200 an ounce for the first time last week in almost two years.
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