■ELECTRONICS
Pioneer to make Blu-ray
Pioneer Corp will start selling Blu-ray disc recorders in Japan before March next year, the company said yesterday, the latest in a string of Japanese electronics makers entering the increasingly competitive sector. Pioneer spokeswoman Kayoko Tanaka said the company had decided to enter the domestic Blu-ray market in anticipation of burgeoning demand for products in the next-generation video format. No decision has been made on overseas sales plans, she said. Pioneer will develop Blu-ray DVD recorders with partner Sharp and sell them under the Pioneer brand, targeting high-end consumers, the Nikkei Shimbun reported yesterday.
■TELECOMS
Few recycle phones: survey
Only 3 percent of mobile phone users recycle their old handsets and 74 percent have never even considered doing so, a study published yesterday by the world’s leading cellphone maker Nokia showed. “It is clear from this survey that when mobile devices finally reach the end of their lives ... very few of them are recycled,” Markus Terho, Nokia’s director of environmental affairs, said in a statement. “Many people are simply unaware that these old and unused mobiles lying around in drawers can be recycled or how to do this,” he said. Nokia said people on average owned around five phones each. The survey was based on interviews with 6,500 people in 13 countries, including China, Finland, India and the US.
■EUROZONE
Slovakia to adopt euro
The EU has formally invited Slovakia to join the eurozone on Jan. 1 next year. The EU finance ministers have agreed on an exchange rate of 30.1260 Slovak korunas for one euro, diplomats said. EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said yesterday’s approval was proof of the “great success” of Europe’s monetary union. Slovakia will become the 16th country to adopt the euro. It is the second of eight Eastern European nations that joined the EU in 2004 to embrace the single currency.
■Vietnam
Economy stabilizing: report
The slowdown in imports is an indication that the government’s efforts to stabilize the economy may be working, easing concerns the country is facing a currency crisis, a report by Moody’s Corp said. Vietnam imported US$6.8 billion in goods last month, preliminary government figures showed, from US$7.9 billion in May. Imports may have slowed given a package of official measures, including interest-rate increases, a report dated Monday from Moody’s Economy.com showed. “The slowdown in import growth, albeit mild, is a welcome sign to the Vietnamese authorities,” wrote Sherman Chan (陳穎嘉), a Sydney-based economist at Moody’s Economy.com.
■WAGES
State pay affecting growth
Many developing countries are paying higher salaries to their state employees than they can afford and stunting economic growth in the process, a study by the Asian Development Bank shows. “The higher the relative government pay rates, the lesser the economic growth attained,” the study of 19 Asian, African and Latin American countries said. “The high relative government pay rates cost the country in terms of economic growth, while the higher employment share does not seem to have any economic growth impact,” the report said.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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