■FINANCE
RBS chairman resigns
Tom McKillop resigned yesterday as chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), leaving the struggling lender two months earlier than planned. McKillop said he was stepping down so that his successor, Philip Hampton, could complete his restructuring of the board. Hampton was deputy chairman of the bank. RBS has been hit hard by the global banking crisis and the British government now owns 70 percent of the bank’s shares.
■ELECTRONICS
Semiconductor sales drop
Global sales of semiconductors fell 2.8 percent last year compared with the previous year, the first year-on-year drop since 2001, the Semiconductor Industry Association reported on Monday. The association said the global economic downturn sent semiconductor sales falling to US$248.6 billion last year from US$255.6 billion in 2007. They declined by 22 percent in December to US$17.4 billion from December 2007 and by 16.6 percent from November 2008.
■OIL
Prices this year likely low
Crude oil in New York will average US$35 a barrel this year as the global economy contracts, limiting demand for fuels, Morgan Stanley said. The recession, especially in emerging markets such as China and India, will cause oil demand to fall by 1.5 million barrels a day this year, said the report by analysts led by Hussein Allidina. The price of West Texas Intermediate crude, the basis for futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange, will rise to average US$55 a barrel next year and US$85 a barrel in 2011, he said in the report.
■RETAIL
German sales slip
German retail sales slipped by 0.2 percent in December, seasonally corrected data released yesterday by the national statistics office showed, as the biggest European economy remained gripped by recession. On a 12-month basis, retail sales lost 0.3 percent, the Destatis statistics service said. On Monday, the German GfK research institute said consumer spending should resist the effects of rising unemployment this year but warned that the global economic slump would affect consumption next year. “Experts generally anticipate that the crisis will not impact decisively on the labor market and consequently consumption until 2010,” it said.
■COMPUTERS
IBM works on top machine
IBM Corp is working with the US Energy Department to build the world’s fastest supercomputer, a machine that would be about 15 times speedier than today’s most powerful systems. The computer, called Sequoia, will perform at a speed of 20 petaflops, the company said today in a statement. One petaflop equals 1,000 trillion calculations a second. IBM expects to deliver the computer in 2011. The Department of Energy will use Sequoia to simulate nuclear explosions at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The fastest supercomputer right now is IBM’s Roadrunner at 1.3 petaflops, the company said.
■INTERNET
Google starts ocean feature
Google launched a new service on Monday to allow Internet users to explore the depths of the world’s oceans from the comfort of their homes. The “Ocean in Google Earth” feature will allow users to “dive beneath the water surface, explore 3D underwater terrain and browse ocean-related content contributed by marine scientists,” a Google statement said.
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