■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.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique