■ Airlines
Buy air tickets near home
Head to your local convenience store to grab a cup of coffee, pick up a pint of ice cream and don't forget to pay for your plane ticket. Thailand's newest budget airline, Nok Air, is not only offering discount flights, it is also offering a novel way to pay for the tickets -- at the local 7-Eleven. After booking a ticket through Nok's call center, the flight can be paid for within 24 hours to confirm the seat at a participating 7-Eleven counter. Travelers must bring a pay code to verify the booking and are charged a 30-baht (US$0.73) fee. The first flights on Nok's two Boeing 737-400s departed July 22 to Chiang Mai, Udon Thani and Hat Yai. Passengers on Nok, which means bird in Thai, can also transfer their payments via ATM machines at Siam Commercial Banks (for a 20-baht fee) or pay by credit card online and through its call center.
■ Technology
Foldable screens in works
Foldable computer screens and other large flexible light-emitting displays could soon become reality because of work by experts from Singapore and Britain, a newspaper reported yesterday. The National University of Singapore (NUS) and Sir Richard Friend of Cambridge University are seeking to develop materials called organic polymers that behave like semiconductors and metals to produce the products, the Straits Times said. "We hope to develop key science and technology that will make possible devices that can't be produced with what is currently available," NUS Assistant Professor Peter Ho was quoted as saying. Such devices could include large flexible posters that emit light and respond to customers walking near them or inexpensive flexible screens for televisions and computers that fold up be pocketed, he said.
■ Outsourcing
Indian editors analyze US
Financial news and information provider Reuters Group plans to outsource as many as 20 editorial jobs to India from more expensive locations around the world, a company spokeswoman said on Monday. Reuters will hire up to 40 trained journalists to staff a new newsroom in Bangalore to take over these editorial duties and to expand output for the company's news service. They will focus primarily on providing information about small and medium-sized firms that are publicly traded in the US, spokeswoman Susan Allsopp said in London. The new employees will compile tables of financial data to accompany longer stories written elsewhere. Reuters already employs 300 people in Bangalore at a separate center for the collation of financial market data.
■ Interest Rates
Fed increase expected
US Federal Reserve policymakers were widely expected to raise interest rates yesterday despite last week's dismal employment news, if only to avoid fanning financial market jitters about stumbling growth. "Given the mind-set in the markets that another increase is coming, the Fed is unlikely to wish to disrupt that expectation at this stage," said economist Lynn Reaser of Banc of America Capital Management Inc. in St. Louis, Missouri. "There might in fact be a greater risk to the economy in the Fed's holding back, simply because to do so would raise questions about what does the Fed know about the expansion's health," she said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
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