REAL ESTATE
London asking prices fall
London home asking prices fell to their weakest level in three-and-a-half years this month as sellers spooked by Brexit held off putting their properties up for sale. Asking prices in the capital slipped 1.5 percent from last month to £593,972 (US$762,279), the lowest level since August 2015, property Web site Rightmove said. New listings in the first two weeks of the year were 10 percent lower than last year as owners were deterred by the cost of moving and concern about the political backdrop, it said.
TRADE
WTO could stall: minister
The operation of the WTO Organization could soon stall because of US delays in appointing new judges, Canadian Minister of International Trade Diversification Jim Carr said as he prepares to convene another round of reform talks in Davos. In an interview with Bloomberg in Tokyo, Carr said that the US’ refusal to appoint judges to the appellate body of the 164-nation WTO means that in “the next number of months” the WTO’s dispute settlement system would effectively stall.
ENERGY
Colombian pipeline attacked
Colombian state-run oil company Ecopetrol SA on Sunday said that a bomb attack on the Transandino pipeline caused spillage in the country’s southwestern Narino Department, close to the border with Ecuador. The pipeline was not operating during the attack on Saturday, the first this year. There were 16 attacks last year, the company said. Ecopetrol did not say who was responsible for the bombing or when the pipeline would return to service.
MALAYSIA
Tax revenue hits record high
The government’s intake of direct taxes rose to a record last year, easing pressure on a budget deficit that is expected to mark a five-year high. The government boosted its direct-tax revenue by 11.1 percent last year from 2017, bringing the total haul to 137 billion ringgit (US$33.26 billion), the Ministry of Finance said in a release on Sunday. That beat the previous record of 134 billion ringgit in 2014. The country expects to narrow the budget deficit to 3.4 percent of GDP this year, from an estimated 3.7 percent last year.
HOSPITALITY
Thomas Cook builds in China
Thomas Cook Group PLC plans to build two new hotels in China with its joint venture partner Fosun International Ltd (復星國際), including the first Asian branch of its own Casa Cook brand. The hotels, one in Lijiang in Yunnan Province, and the other in Taicang in Jiangsu Province, near Shanghai, would be built by Fosun and managed by Thomas Cook China, and open late next year, the companies said. Thomas Cook now has four own-brand hotels being built in China.
TRANSPORTATION
Israel opens new airport
Israel yesterday inaugurated a new international airport in its Negev Desert meant to boost tourism to the nearby Red Sea and serve as an emergency alternative to Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport. The official ceremony was scheduled to begin at 11:30am, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in attendance. Initially, Ramon Airport is to handle only domestic flights operated by Israeli carriers Arkia Israeli Airlines Ltd and Israir Airlines Ltd. A date has not yet been given for the start of international flights.
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