Asian currencies rose this week, led by Indonesia’s rupiah and the South Korean won, as reports signaling a global recession is easing bolstered demand for riskier assets.
The MSCI Asia-Pacific Index of shares and the Bloomberg-JPMorgan Asia Dollar Index, which tracks the region’s 10 most-traded currencies excluding the yen, both reached their highest levels since October after US home sales jumped the most in seven years and China’s manufacturing expanded for a third month. Equity funds investing in the region’s emerging markets took in US$1.54 billion in the week ended Wednesday, EPFR Global said.
The rupiah advanced 3.8 percent this week to 9,930 per dollar in Jakarta, strengthening beyond 10,000 for the first time in more than seven months. The won gained 1 percent to 1,243.15 in Seoul.
The won approached a seven-month high of 1,225.97 reached on May 11 as global funds bought US$552 million more of the nation’s shares than they sold this week and exporters repatriated overseas income.
The New Taiwan dollar this week weakened 0.4 percent against the greenback, falling to NT$32.720 at the 4pm local close yesterday, from NT$32.607 on Friday, Taipei Forex Inc said.
Elsewhere, the Philippine peso gained 0.2 percent to 47.24 this week, the Malaysian ringgit weakened 0.2 percent to 3.4965 and the Singapore dollar fell 0.2 percent to S$1.4469.
The US dollar advanced the most against the euro since April this week and rose to a four-week high versus the yen after a US government report showed employers cut fewer jobs last month than economists forecast.
The greenback climbed against almost all of the other major currencies as a slower deterioration of the labor market supported bets dollar-denominated assets will gain as the US leads the global economy out of a recession.
The dollar on Friday appreciated as much as 1.8 percent versus the euro, the biggest intraday gain since April 27, before trading at US$1.3966 at 4:01pm in New York, compared with US$1.4183 on Thursday. The dollar rose 2.4 percent to ¥98.85, from ¥96.58, after touching ¥98.89, the highest level since May 8. The euro climbed 0.8 percent to ¥138.01 from ¥136.97.
The pound traded near its lowest level this month against the US dollar as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown rearranged his Cabinet amid calls for his resignation.
Sterling slid 1.2 percent to US$1.5977 after touching US$1.5941, the weakest since last Friday. It briefly erased its decline as the US jobs report spurred speculation that demand for Britain’s assets will rise.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting information from staff, a European security source said on Friday. The operation, allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, targeted dozens of employees at the military alliance or EU organizations through fictitious accounts, the source said, confirming reports in French and Belgian media. Posing as recruiters on the online professional networking platform, Chinese spies would initially request paid reports before later soliciting non-public or even classified information. One particularly active fake profile used the name “Kevin Zhang,” claiming to be the head
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