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World Business Quick Take

■ COMMODITIES

Gold at record price

The price of gold rose to a record of more than US$980 an ounce and silver advanced to a 27-year high above US$20 an ounce in Asia as a weakening US dollar increased the appeal of precious metals as an alternative investment. Gold for immediate delivery gained as much as US$10.73, or 1.1 percent, to US$984.90 an ounce, while silver climbed to US$20.19 an ounce, the highest since 1980.



■ AVIATION

Strong euro worries CEO

The chief executive of Airbus said on Sunday that his company remains concerned about the record-setting euro, but is not poised to cut more jobs. CEO Thomas Enders, in an interview with German newspaper Tagesspiegel published yesterday, said that Airbus remained concerned about the strength of the euro, which soared to a record high of US$1.5238 on Friday, but that with its order books brimming it does not plan to cut any jobs. "If the dollar drops by 10 cents we have to make savings of a further 1 billion euros [US$1.5 billion] to maintain our competitiveness," Enders was quoted as saying by the newspaper.



■ WORK

Many sleep on the job

About one-third of US workers said they had fallen asleep or become very sleepy at work in the past month, a survey released yesterday showed. The survey of 1,000 people by the National Sleep Foundation found participants average six hours and 40 minutes of sleep a night on weeknights, even though they estimated they needed roughly another 40 minutes of sleep to be at their best. Just how big a deal that is depends, of course, on one's job. Last week, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission acknowledged it should have done more to investigate a tip that security guards routinely took naps while on the job at a Pennsylvania nuclear plant.



■ ECONOMY

Hanoi diversifies markets

Vietnam will attempt to maintain its current economic growth rate by diversifying its export markets to include more Middle East and African countries and also encourage investment, its prime minister said in an interview published yesterday. Speaking to the Financial Times from Hanoi, Nguyen Tan Dung said the government was determined to see economic growth of between 8 percent and 9 percent, driven by boosting the value of exports by 20 percent. Dung said conditions were good to increase exports "not only to the US, the EU, Japan and China but also to the large markets of Middle Eastern and African countries ... Our strategy is diversifying the markets."



■ FOREX

Yen at three-year high

The Japanese finance minister remained tightlipped yesterday about the US dollar's plunge to a three-year low versus the yen, saying only that moves in foreign exchange rates are partly due to various economic indicators released over recent days. "I think it is moving on various economic indicators," Japanese Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga told reporters, adding that he didn't feel it was "appropriate" for him to comment on rate moves. The dollar hit ¥102.92 early yesterday, its lowest point since Jan. 28, 2005, when the dollar stood at ¥102.37. The dollar has been weighed down in recent days by concerns over the state of the US economy.