■ Profit-taking depresses shares
Share prices closed 0.33 percent lower yesterday as an initial Wall Street-driven advance lost momentum in the face of profit-taking and weakness in financial stocks, dealers said. They said the financial sector lost ground following a report that lawmakers have agreed to a ceiling on interest rates for debt taken on by holders of credit and cash cards.
The TAIEX dropped 21 points to end at 6,329.52, on turnover of NT$112.33 billion (US$3.36 billion). The New Taiwan dollar declined against its US counterpart on the Taipei foreign exchange market, down NT$0.024 to end the day at NT$33.485. Turnover was US$861 million.
■ DGBAS releases job figures
A total of 841,000 job openings were available at government-run employment agencies in the first 10 months of the year, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) announced on Tuesday. With the number of job seekers totaling 487,000 during that period, this translates into 1.7 jobs per person. The DGBAS report shows that the number of employers and job seekers registering with government-run employment agencies increased by 7.5 percent and 9.5 percent, respectively, compared with the same period of last year. However, the jobs available to each job seeker was lower than the 1.8 during the year-earlier period.
Most of the openings -- 374,000 -- were for workers with a senior-high school diploma. A total of 403,177 job seekers were hired from January to October, up 78.6 percent from the same period of last year, according to the bureau's statistics.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) yesterday said it plans to resume operations at two coal-fired power generators for three months to boost security of electricity supply as liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply risks are running high due to the Middle East conflict. The two coal-fired power generators are at Mailiao Power Plant in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮). The plant, operated by Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), supplied electricity to Taipower’s power grid until the end of last year. Taipower’s decision came about one month after Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) on March 10 said that the nation had no imminent
Some robotaxi passengers were left stranded in the middle of fast-moving traffic in a major Chinese city after their driverless vehicles stopped running, according to police and media reports on Wednesday. A preliminary investigation indicates more than 100 robotaxis came to a halt because of a “system malfunction,” police in the city of Wuhan said in a statement, without elaborating. No injuries were reported. One passenger told Chinese media that their robotaxi stopped after turning a corner. An instruction on a screen read: “Driving system malfunction. Staff are expected to arrive in 5 minutes.” After no one showed up, the passenger pushed
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