■ JAPAN
Tokyo tells US to heal itself
Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga yesterday ruled out any plan to introduce a stimulus package or tax cuts despite growing calls for concerted efforts to help combat a US mortgage crisis. "Fiscal stimulus or tax cuts used to be called for when our economy deteriorated, but we are not in a situation that we need to use a conventional, knee-jerk approach," Nukaga said in an interview with TV Asahi. "We have to adapt ourselves to the present situation." He called on Washington to concentrate on its own efforts to subdue the mortgage crisis. "The epicenter of the subprime loan problem is in the United States," he said. "The United States has to resolve the problem by itself."
■ AVIATION
A380 slides malfunction
Airbus' A380 super jumbo, the world's largest passenger aircraft, has encountered problems with its inflatable escape slides, the Internet site of the Germany weekly Stern reported on Saturday. The escape slides had to be revised after just a few flights, the magazine said, citing reports from clients of the European aircraft maker. The article quoted an Airbus spokesman confirming that there had been a problem. The explosive charges meant to inflate the slides in just a few seconds during an emergency evacuation were deteriorating over time and becoming unusable, the report said. To replace the faulty charges, all the slides had to be dismantled in what was a time-consuming operation, Stern reported.
■ MINING
Workers end strike
Workers at Mexico's largest lead mine have ended a nearly month-long strike after receiving a 6 percent wage hike, Mexico's Labor Department said. The strike at the Naica mine in the border state of Chihuahua ended on Friday night after owner Industrias Penoles SAB agreed to the hike and said it would pay 50 percent of the salaries lost during the walkout, the department said in a statement late on Friday. About 350 members of the National Mining and Metal Workers Union stopped work on Jan. 15, arguing that their wages didn't reflect corporate profits from high metal prices.
■ AUTOMOBILES
GM tries to rein-in states
General Motors Corp CEO Rick Wagoner urged the National Automobile Dealers Association to lobby against individual US states trying to set their own limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Wagoner, speaking on Saturday group's convention in San Francisco, said several states want to go beyond requirements passed by the US Congress. If that happens and automakers must focus on state regulations, they won't be able to focus as much on alternative fuel vehicles to reduce oil consumption and pollution, he said. "We're not going to be able to accomplish everything that we otherwise could," he said. He also said dealers and automakers should push for infrastructure to handle new technologies, including hydrogen and ethanol fueling stations and charging stations for electric vehicles.
■ MYANMAR
Junta to auction gems
The military government will hold a new sale of gems, pearls and jade next month in a bid to earn much-needed foreign currency, despite calls to boycott the auctions, state media said yesterday. The official New Light of Myanmar said the sale would be held from March 9 to March 20, just two months after the last auction. The sale last month drew about 280 foreign buyers, despite calls from the US and rights groups for a boycott because of a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests last year. The government did not reveal how much it earned off the sale, but last November, the junta earned US$150 million from a gem emporium.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Green city under way
The oil-rich United Arab Emirates (UAE) was set to start work yesterday on construction of the world's first zero carbon emissions city, a spokesman for the project said. "Construction on Masdar City begins today," the spokesman said, adding that the 6.5km2 development would cost US$22 billion and was set for completion in 2015. Masdar City will house 50,000 people and will be run entirely on renewable energy such as solar power, exploiting the desert state's near constant supply of sunshine. The city is named after the Arabic word for "source." Residents will use electric-powered travel pods to get around the city. The UAE sits on the world's fifth-largest oil reserves and fourth-largest gas reserves, most of them in the emirate of Abu Dhabi
■ TELECOMS
PRC lines badly damaged
China's telecom industry faces a huge bill after the worst winter in decades, with millions of users cut off and thousands of kilometers of phone lines damaged, state media said yesterday. Preliminary government statistics showed the massive snow falls led to losses of 1.1 billion yuan (US$150 million), Xinhua news agency reported. Ten million mobile and fixed-line subscribers were still unable to use their phones as of Friday, Xinhua said. A total of 10,000 mobile phone base stations remain out of service and 150,000 poles for fixed-line services have collapsed, while 16,000km of lines have been damaged, Xinhua said. It reported that 80,000 telecom industry workers had fanned out across the country to seek to restore services. China had 547 million mobile phone subscribers and 365 million users of fixed-line services at the end of last year, government data said.
■ AGRICULTURE
France bans modified corn
France has banned a strain of genetically modified (GM) corn from US agribusiness giant Monsanto, delighting environmentalists but sparking outrage from the company and French farmers. At least one association planned a legal challenge to Saturday's decision, but leading environmental campaigner Jose Bove welcomed the decision, describing it as the fruit of a 10-year battle. A spokeswoman for Monsanto said on Saturday that France's decision to outlaw the use of the MON810 strain of corn, the only GM crop grown in France, "had no scientific basis." "Monsanto is studying all the legal options to defend the liberty of French farmers to use safe and authorized products," she said.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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