■LATIN AMERICA
Bank predicts downturn
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Caracas, Venezuela, predicted on Sunday a sharp downturn for Latin America for next year with lower revenues and rising unemployment, and said it would redirect US$6 billion to finance production. “Latin America faces a crisis that is very different from those of the past,” said IDB vice president Santiago Levy at a meeting in Santo Domingo. “We face a period of stagnation in global growth, at least throughout 2009 and possibly through the first quarter of 2010.” Job creation “will practically stop,” with a consequent rise in informal occupations, the official said.
■AUTOMOBILES
Jaguar in talks for loan
Jaguar Land Rover, owned by Indian group Tata Motors, is in talks with the British government about a loan of £1 billion (US$1.49 billion) to prop up the employer of thousands of workers in Britain, the Sunday Times said on Sunday. The iconic brands Jaguar and Land Rover together employ about 15,000 workers in Britain, whose car industry like the US auto sector is suffering at the hands of a global economic slowdown. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was considering the JLR proposal and could deliver a verdict in a couple of weeks, the Times said. In response to the report, a spokesman for JLR said: “The automotive industry is facing unprecedented trading conditions as a direct fall out of the banking crisis and turbulence in financial markets and we are of course keeping government appraised of the impact on our business.”
■OIL
Prices gain in Asian trade
Oil prices gained slightly in Asian trade yesterday, remaining near US$50 a barrel as the market prepared for an expected OPEC production cut next weekend, dealers said. New York’s main futures contract, light sweet crude for January delivery, rose US$0.63 to US$50.56 a barrel. The contract closed at US$49.93 on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Friday. Brent North Sea crude for January was US$0.79 higher at US$49.98.
■TRADE
Meeting to be held on Doha
The WTO may to hold a ministerial meeting on the Doha round next month in a bid to conclude the long-frustrated talks, an official said in Geneva, Switzerland, on Sunday. “It seems highly likely that a meeting will take place,” said a source close to the WTO, following talks between representatives from 30 member states and WTO director-general Pascal Lamy. Envoys interviewed after the discussions with Lami were circumspect about the timing of such a meeting, with the exception of Indonesia’s trade ambassador Gusmandi Busdami. “We will have a ministerial meeting between Dec. 10 to Dec. 15. The political will is there,” Busdami said.
■BANKING
KfW expects further losses
Germany’s state-owned development bank KfW is expecting further losses in its final-quarter results of this year, following losses in the first three quarters of the year, the bank’s chief said. Last month and this month had been “catastrophic” for the bank, Ulrich Schroeder said in yesterday’s edition of the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The bank would need years to get over its losses, he added. Hit hard by the international financial crisis, KfW recorded a loss of 1.8 billion euros (US$2.26 billion) for the first nine months of the year, a statement said last week. Its bail-out of stricken business lender IKB cost it 1.1 billion euros. Devaluation of its asset portfolio cost another 1.6 billion.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has