State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) is to lower pump prices for gasoline and diesel by NT$1 per liter today, due to a fall in international crude oil prices, the company said.
The price cut was taken to reflect falling international crude oil prices amid lingering concerns over a global supply glut, CPC said.
The company calculates weekly fuel prices based on a weighted oil price formula comprised of 70 percent Dubai crude and 30 percent Brent crude. Based on that formula, the price per barrel of crude oil stood at US$44.70 as of Friday, down from US$48.76 a week earlier, it said.
The international crude oil market remained volatile last week, extending losses from a week earlier due to rising concerns over OPEC’s failure to implement an output cut.
While OPEC members are scheduled to meet in Vienna on Nov. 30 to further discuss a plan to cut production in an attempt to rein in crude oil prices, market confidence of a deal being struck is weak, analysts said.
Several oil producers — including nonmembers of OPEC such as Iran, Iraq and Russia — have appeared reluctant to cut their oil production, which has made many energy traders wary and led them to bet on oil prices falling even further, analysts said.
In addition to worries over the oil cut failure, an increase in oil inventories in the US market has also made energy traders nervous, further pushing down crude oil prices, they said.
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化), the nation’s sole privately owned fuel supplier, on Saturday announced plans to cut gasoline and diesel prices by NT$1 per liter, starting from 1am today.
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