■ GERMANY
Consumer confidence slips
Consumer confidence has fallen further as climbing energy prices eat away at household purchasing power, a study by the GfK research institute showed yesterday. The latest barometer of consumer sentiment in Europe’s biggest economy slipped to 3.9 points from a revised figure of 4.7 points in its previous reading. A year ago, the confidence index stood at 7.4 points. GfK said it had revised down its consumption growth outlook to 0.5 percent from 1.0 percent previously given expectations that inflation would remain around 3.0 percent in the coming months.
■ ENTERTAINMENT
DreamWorks mulls venture
India’s Reliance Entertainment and other investors are negotiating with Hollywood’s DreamWorks SKG to form a new movie venture worth as much as US$2 billion, two people familiar with the talks said. They said that Dreamworks, the movie studio founded in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, was looking to raise a total of US$2 billion from investors — US$1 billion in equity and another US$1 billion for new movie projects. One of the individuals said Reliance would likely invest more than US$500 million to US$600 million in equity.
■ ENTERTAINMENT
Fandango buys Movies.com
Movie ticketing and entertainment site Fandango Inc said on Monday it had acquired Movies.com from Walt Disney Co for an undisclosed amount. Los Angeles-based Fandango, which is owned by Comcast Corp, sells tickets for 1,300 theaters in the US. It said it would now handle the movie ticketing functions for Movies.com, which is mainly an entertainment Web site. Movies.com, which previously partnered with MovieTickets.com for ticketing, was owned by the Walt Disney Internet Group. Philadelphia-based cable TV system owner Comcast said the purchase price was minimal. Fandango said it had 6.3 million monthly unique visitors to its Web site last month, compared with 1.9 million for Movies.com. Both sites were launched in 2000.
■ CONGLOMERATES
Ex-Samsung director guilty
A former director at Samsung America Inc has pleaded guilty to embezzling US$1 million to US$2.5 million from his employer. John Lee admitted on Monday that the scheme ran from 2002 through last year. He had been director of the export department at the Ridgefield Park offices of the South Korean conglomerate Samsung Corp. Lee says he created a fake entity with a similar name of an actual company and had Samsung send money to an account he created after submitting bogus invoices. The 44-year-old pleaded guilty to a wire fraud charge and an income tax charge.
■ ECONOMY
Surgery, vacations slow
South Koreans are cutting down on cosmetic surgery and vacations amid the economic slowdown, reports said yesterday. “We saw a 30 percent drop in double eyelid operations and rhinoplasty from last year and more than a 40 percent decline in facial contouring surgery,” Kim Beyong-geon, a surgeon in southern Seoul, told the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper. A joint survey by JoongAng Ilbo newspaper and recruitment firm Job Korea yesterday also showed that about 61 percent of those polled had changed summer vacation plans. Of these, about 30 percent said they would use public transport rather than private cars, about 15 percent said they would cut the length of their break and about 9 percent had scrapped overseas travel.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique