■JAPAN
Spending freeze imposed
The new government said yesterday that it would freeze part of its predecessor’s extra budget to weed out wasteful spending, but insisted it was committed to reviving the economy. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has pledged to put more money in the pockets of ordinary people with cash allowances for families, free high-school education and an end to highway tolls. Hatoyama instructed his Cabinet members to suspend part of the extra budget, worth ¥3.9 trillion (US$152 billion), Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano told reporters. Hatoyama instructed each minister to review all of the public projects related to the additional budget for this fiscal year and to report back by Oct. 2, Hirano said.
■FINANCE
Aiful requets creditor help
Ailing Japanese consumer finance company Aiful said yesterday it will ask creditors to let it delay repayments of ¥280 billion in debt, triggering massive sell orders of its stock and pressuring other financial shares. Aiful shares were untraded yesterday due to a glut of sell orders. The announcement rattled investors and contributed to the decline in the Japanese stock market. Aiful closed at ¥184 on Thursday, down 5.6 percent from Wednesday. Aiful will ask 66 financial institutions next week to postpone its debt repayments.
■ELECTRONICS
Palm posts loss
Smart phone maker Palm Inc posted a wider loss for its fiscal first quarter on Thursday as revenue dropped, but adjusted earnings and sales handily beat Wall Street’s expectations. For the three months ended Aug. 28, the company posted a loss after paying preferred dividends of US$164.5 million, or US$1.17 per share, compared with a loss of US$41.9 million, or US$0.39 per share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue tumbled to US$68 million from US$366.9 million. But adjusted sales, which exclude deferred revenue and cost of sales from the Pre smart phone, totaled US$360.7 million.
■BANKING
Swiss probe UBS AG
UBS AG, Switzerland’s biggest bank by assets, is under investigation by the Swiss stock exchange over its handling of public reporting. The Swiss exchange “began an investigation into possible breaches by UBS AG of the provisions on the ad hoc publicity in the period from 2007 to the end of 2008,” it said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. During that period, UBS reported losses of 54.5 billion Swiss francs (US$52.9 billion), more than any other European bank, after getting caught by the slide in the US housing market. The Swiss government bought UBS mandatory convertible notes last year to help the Zurich-based bank split off toxic assets.
■ELECTRONICS
KIST invents new transistor
Researchers at the state-run Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) said yesterday they had developed a new transistor, which moves faster and consumes less energy than existing semiconductors, and would open the way for no-booting computers. They said the new transistor uses not only the on-off state of electric current but also electrons’ spinning directions — clockwise and counter-clockwise — to handle information. “The prototype spin transistor has paved the way for developing new computers that do not require the time-consuming booting process,” said Koo Hyun-cheol, one of the researchers. “It will also help develop devices which have memory and central processing units merged into a single chip,” he 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
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
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft
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