■INDONESIA
Jakarta to spend more
Jakarta plans to spend an extra 50 trillion rupiah (US$4.5 billion) to help sustain economic growth this year and counter the impact of a global financial crisis, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said. Southeast Asia’s largest economy will outlay 38 trillion rupiah this year from unrealized spending planned last year and the other 12 trillion rupiah for this year, the president said. The additional spending may help Indonesia’s US$433 billion economic growth exceed 5 percent this year, from an estimated 6.1 percent last year, central bank governor Boediono said. The budget deficit is estimated to have narrowed to 0.1 percent of GDP last year, the lowest since the Asian financial crisis a decade earlier, Yudhoyono said.
■JAPAN
Tuna fetches top yen
The Japanese passion for sushi is apparently immune to the global economic crisis. A plump tuna yesterday fetched ¥9.6 million (US$104,000) at Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market, the second-highest price ever. This year’s first auction took place before dawn at the world’s largest fish market, with 730 tunas lined up for bidding. The top-priced fish was a blue-fin tuna weighing 128kg. “I just wanted to bid on the best tuna of the day,” the winning buyer said, according to Jiji Press. He said he planned to sell the tuna to high-end sushi bars in Japan and China. The highest price ever paid for a tuna at the market was ¥20 million in 2001. Tsukiji market, the source of fresh sushi and sashimi flown daily to top restaurants the world over, has long topped must-see lists for foreign visitors to Tokyo. But the auction was closed to tourists last month after fishmongers complained that visitors were bad mannered.
■ELECTRONICS
Samsung unveils slim TV
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics yesterday unveiled what it says is the world’s slimmest liquid-crystal-display (LCD) TV. The new product, measuring only 6.5mm thick, is thinner than any other existing TV set, and even slimmer than most mobile handsets, Samsung said in a statement. Its thickness is one-seventh of Samsung’s “Bordeaux 850” LCD TV, which is currently the thinnest on the market.
■PHARMACEUTICALS
Pfizer exercises option
Pfizer Inc, the world’s largest drugmaker, exercised an option to buy commercial licenses on vaccines developed by Switzerland’s Cytos Biotechnology AG. The options were based on an agreement the companies signed in August that gave Pfizer access to experimental vaccines using immune-response technology, Schlieren, Switzerland-based Cytos said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. Cytos did not disclose the size of the payments or say which diseases the vaccines target.
■ECONOMY
No Great Depression: Sachs
The world is facing a serious recession but should avoid a repeat of the Great Depression it experienced in the 1930s, a top US economist said on Sunday. This recession would be more serious than others, but not as hard as the Great Depression, Jeffrey Sachs, a special advisor to the UN secretary general, told the Spanish daily El Pais. Sachs said he also believed Asia should be able to maintain positive economic growth levels. Allowing Lehman Brothers to collapse had been a “huge mistake” that had worsened the economic crisis, he said. Any other errors of that magnitude — such as letting troubled US automakers to go under — would lead to a depression.
PLA MANEUVERS: Although Beijing has yet to formally announce military drills, its coast guard vessels have been spotted near and around Taiwan since Friday The Taiwanese military is on high alert and is closely monitoring the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) air and naval deployments after Beijing yesterday reserved seven airspace areas east of its Zhejiang and Fujian provinces through Wednesday. Beijing’s action was perceived as a precursor to a potential third “Joint Sword” military exercise, which national security experts said the PLA could launch following President William Lai’s (賴清德) state visits to the nation’s three Pacific allies and stopovers in Hawaii and Guam last week. Unlike the Joint Sword military exercises in May and October, when Beijing provided detailed information about the affected areas, it
CHINA: The activities come amid speculation that Beijing might launch military exercises in response to Lai’s recent visit to Pacific allies The Ministry of National Defense (MND) yesterday said China had nearly doubled the number of its warships operating around the nation in the previous 24 hours, ahead of what security sources expect would be a new round of war games. China’s military activities come amid speculation Beijing might organize military drills around the nation in response to President William Lai’s (賴清德) recent visit to Pacific allies, including stops in Hawaii and Guam, a US territory. Lai returned from the week-long trip on Friday night. Beijing has held two rounds of war games around Taiwan this year, and sends ships and military planes
Five flights have been arranged to help nearly 2,000 Taiwanese tourists return home from Okinawa after being stranded due to cruise ship maintenance issues, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications announced yesterday. China Airlines Ltd (中華航空), and EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) have arranged five flights with a total of 748 additional seats to transport 1,857 passengers from the MSC Bellissima back to Taiwan, the ministry said. The flights have been scheduled for yesterday and today by the Civil Aviation Administration, with the cruise operator covering all associated costs. The MSC Bellissima, carrying 4,341 passengers, departed from Keelung on Wednesday last week for Okinawa,
US president-elect Donald Trump said he would “never say” if Washington is committed to defending Taiwan from China, but “I would prefer that they do not do it [ an attack],” adding that he has a “good relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). “I never say because I have to negotiate things, right?” Trump said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press host Kristen Welker after saying he would not reveal his incoming administration’s stance on Taiwan’s defense in the event of an attack. Asked the question again, Trump, in a reference to China, said: “I would prefer that they