JAPAN
Consumer prices fall again
Consumer prices fell last month for the eighth straight month, data showed yesterday, giving the world’s third-largest economy no sign of winning a long battle against deflation. Core consumer prices, excluding volatile fresh-food costs, declined 0.4 percent from a year earlier — in line with the market forecast — putting the Bank of Japan’s 2 percent inflation target further out of reach. Earlier this month, the central bank again pushed back the timeline for hitting its inflation target, the latest policy change that has raised questions about its attempt to revive the deflation-plagued economy.
SOUTH KOREA
Consumer confidence drops
Consumer confidence plunged to the lowest level in more than seven years as a political scandal engulfing the president and some of the nation’s biggest companies casts clouds over the outlook for the economy. The central bank’s monthly consumer sentiment index fell to 95.8 this month from 101.9 the previous month, indicating rising pessimism, data released yesterday showed. That put the gauge below levels seen when a deadly respiratory disease kept local shoppers at home last year and when a ferry sank in 2014, killing about 300 people, many of them school students.
AIRLINES
Strike grounds flights
Germany’s flagship airline, Lufthansa, said 830 domestic and European flights yesterday were being scrapped, affecting more than 100,000 passengers on the third day of a strike by pilots demanding higher pay. More than 2,600 flights have been canceled since the start of the walkout, which pilots union Vereinigung Cockpit on Thursday announced would be extended into today. The union is demanding a pay rise of an average of 3.66 percent per year, retroactive for the past five years. Management is offering 2.5 percent. The top-selling daily Bild said the strike is costing Lufthansa about 10 million euros (US$10.5 million) per day.
HOUSING
London affordability falls
Homes in London are less affordable than ever before as low mortgage rates allow buyers to borrow more. It now costs the average Londoner 14.2 times their annual gross salary to purchase a home, the highest level on record and more than double the ratio for the UK as a whole, according to data compiled by Hometrack. The annual rate of house-price growth in the capital was 9.1 percent last month, almost the lowest in three years, the property researcher said. Home prices in London have surged 86 percent since 2009 as the supply of new stock failed to meet demand from domestic homebuyers and overseas investors.
TURKEY
Central bank hikes rate
The central bank on Thursday announced a surprise hike in its main interest rate, the first in nearly three years as it battles to prop up the embattled lira. The monetary policy committee of the bank said the one-week repurchasing rate was being lifted from 7.5 percent to 8 percent, the first rate hike by the bank since January 2014. The hike initially prompted a rally in the value of the lira, but it then lost ground after the European Parliament voted to freeze EU membership talks with Turkey. “The decision to begin the tightening cycle was clearly motivated by the fall in the lira,” said William Jackson, senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics in London.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”