■FINANCE
Citi closes down branches
Citigroup Inc is closing 330 branches of its US consumer finance business as part of a restructuring aimed at finding a buyer for the unit, the bank said Tuesday. The branch closures at CitiFinancial will result in about 500 to 600 job cuts across 48 states, the bank said. The US business of CitiFinancial will also be split into two parts, one offering personal, home equity and refinancing loans and the other handling loan modifications and restructuring, Citigroup said. CitiFinancial will be renamed after the reorganization is complete.
■EMPLOYMENT
HP to cut 9,000 jobs
Hewlett-Packard, the world’s leading personal computer maker, said on Tuesday it would cut 9,000 jobs in the next few years as it makes a US$1 billion investment in fully automated data centers. The investment represents the next generation of its commercial services business, HP said in a statement. The company plans to take a charge of about US$1 billion over the next several years for the technology upgrade, enabling clients “to run their businesses faster and more efficiently.
■CANADA
Flaherty expects growth
Canada expects its economy to grow by 3.3 percent this year, Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty said yesterday, adding that inflation remained a concern and might eventually force additional interest rate hikes. “There is no firm plan to go forward this year with respect to interest rates. We just have to watch and wait and see,” Flaherty said in Shanghai. The Bank of Canada raised its key interest rate to 0.5 percent from 0.25 percent on Tuesday, the first G7 industrialized economy to do so after the global recession.
■BANKING
Asset reduction needed: ECB
The European Central Bank (ECB) said on Tuesday that eurozone banks might have to reduce the value of their assets by a total of 195 billion euros (US$240 billion) by next year. It said in its twice-yearly Financial Stability Review that lenders faced several challenges, including a weakening commercial real estate market, hundreds of billions of euros in bad debts and possible competition for refinancing from governments with swollen sovereign debt. With governments competing in the bond market, “this raises the risk of bank bond issuance being crowded out, thereby heightening roll-over risks, which are sizeable for some institutions,” the report said.
■INTERNET
Sophos warns of scammers
Internet security firm Sophos has warned Facebook users to be on alert for a scam that sends a spam message to all of their friends on the social network. Sophos, in a pair of blog posts late Monday, said “hundreds of thousands” of Facebook users have fallen for the scam, which it dubbed “likejacking.” It said some Facebook users had received a message such as “This man takes a picture of himself EVERYDAY for 8 YEARS!!” and were encouraged to click on a link.
■AUTOMOTIVE
GM pays half a loan back
General Motors (GM) said on Tuesday it was repaying early half of a loan of US$63 million from the Argentine government provided when the US auto giant went into bankruptcy last year. The announcement came from GM’s top executive for Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, Sergio Rocha, at a meeting with Argentine President Cristina Kirchner. The loan was made to help GM develop a new Chevrolet “Agile” in its plant in Rosario, Argentina.
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