UNITED KINGDOM
Bank hints at negative rates
The Bank of England yesterday gave its strongest hint yet that negative interest rates could be on the way as the economy battles against COVID-19 and Brexit headwinds. Following a regular policy meeting, the central bank, led by Governor Andrew Bailey, left its key interest rate at a record low of 0.1 percent amid low inflation and rising unemployment caused by COVID-19 fallout. The bank maintained its cash stimulus at £730 billion (US$948 billion), meeting minutes showed.
JAPAN
Inflation gauge hits negative
The country’s key inflation gauge went negative again last month, driven down by government discounts meant to boost consumer spending and help the virus-hit travel industry. Consumer prices excluding fresh food last month fell 0.4 percent from a year earlier, falling back into negative territory after two flat months, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications reported yesterday. A 32 percent decline in the cost of hotel accommodations accounted for most of the overall drop. The Bank of Japan has been fighting a long battle to stoke price momentum, but Governor Haruhiko Kuroda yesterday said that he is not overly concerned by temporary price effects from the government’s stimulus measures. The bank would not hesitate to ease further if factors in the labor market also start to weigh on inflation, he added.
BANKING
Citigroup to hire in Asia
Citigroup Inc is embarking on hiring 6,000 young people in Asia over the next three years in an effort to help cushion the region from a blowout in youth unemployment. It is also offering 60,000 job training opportunities for youth below the age of 24 over the next three years across its retail and institutional businesses in the region, the New York-based bank said yesterday. Citi and its Citi Foundation pledged to invest US$35 million in philanthropic contributions and grants to improve the employability of youth from low-income and underserved communities in Asia by 2023. The Asia Pacific region is home to more than half of the world’s youth population, estimated at 700 million people. They account for almost half of the region’s unemployed, even though they make up just 20 percent of the working-age population, the International Labor Organization said.
INTERNET
Facebook sued for ‘spying’
Facebook Inc is again being sued for allegedly spying on Instagram users, this time through the unauthorized use of their mobile phone cameras. The lawsuit springs from media reports in July that the photo-sharing app appeared to be accessing iPhone cameras even when they were not actively being used. Facebook denied the reports and blamed a bug, which the company said it was correcting, for triggering what it described as false notifications that Instagram was accessing iPhone cameras. In the complaint filed yesterday in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, New Jersey Instagram user Brittany Conditi contends that the app’s use of the camera is intentional and done for the purpose of collecting “lucrative and valuable data on its users that it would not otherwise have access to.” By “obtaining extremely private and intimate personal data on their users, including in the privacy of their own homes,” Instagram and Facebook are able to collect “valuable insights and market research,” the complaint says.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day