The euro rose the most in eight months against the US dollar amid speculation traders who bet on its decline during Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis had to buy back the currency as it strengthened to a one-week high.
Europe’s common currency fell on Wednesday to its weakest level in four years a day after Germany banned naked short sales, adding to concern that the region’s leadership may not be able to contain the crisis. The yen gained against all of its 16 major counterparts as the MSCI World Index of shares traded near the lowest since August and the Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index of 19 raw materials fell for a fourth straight week. The greenback fell versus the yen ahead of a report next week that may show US durable goods orders rose last month.
The euro climbed 1.7 percent, the largest five-day gain since September, to US$1.2570 from US$1.2358 on May 14. It fell to US$1.2144 on Wednesday, the lowest level since April 2006, before rebounding on Friday to as much as US$1.2672, the highest since May 13.
The euro dropped 1.1 percent to ¥113.13, its fourth consecutive decline, from ¥114.38. The greenback decreased 2.7 percent, the largest decline since February, to ¥90, from ¥92.47.
The pound fell against the US dollar for a fourth week after the Bank of England downplayed the threat of inflation.
The pound was 0.5 percent lower on the week as of 5:02pm on Friday at US$1.4466. It fell to US$1.4231 on May 20, its lowest level since March 30 last year.
Sterling has weakened 4 percent this year, according to Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Indexes. It depreciated 2.1 percent in the week versus the euro, the most since September, to £0.8686.
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