■BANKING
Lloyds agrees to pay penalty
British-based Lloyds TSB Bank agreed on Friday to pay a US$350 million penalty to settle a probe that it illegally handled financial transfers for Iran and Sudan in violation of US sanctions. A Justice Department statement said Lloyd’s “has accepted and acknowledged responsibility for its criminal conduct” in a criminal complain filed in US District Court in New York. “Lloyds agreed to forfeit the funds as part of deferred prosecution agreements with the Department of Justice and the New York County District Attorney’s Office,” the statement said. Prosecutors alleged that from 1995 until 2007, Lloyds agents in Britain and Dubai “falsified outgoing US wire transfers that involved countries or persons on US sanctions lists.”
■ECONOMY
Harper vows ‘big actions’
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed on Friday his government would initiate major measures in an upcoming budget and possibly over the next three to five years to stimulate the economy. “We’ll take big, comprehensive actions,” Harper told a press conference. “We’ll assume that we’re probably going to look at a period of three to five years of such actions,” he added. “It won’t necessarily be that long, but we’re not going to underestimate the situation.” Earlier, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said extra government spending or tax cuts or both to prop up the economy would mean this year “the deficit will be substantial.” The budget is to be unveiled on Jan. 27, marking the nation’s first budget deficit in more than a decade.
■REAL ESTATE
PRC property prices drop
Chinese property prices fell last month for the first time since 2005, state media reported yesterday, quoting official figures. The price of housing in 70 major cities fell 0.4 percent year-on-year, Xinhua reported, quoting from a statement issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planning agency, and the National Bureau of Statistics. The southern boom town of Shenzhen saw the largest fall, with prices down 18.1 percent.
■PETROLEUM
PDVSA denies layoffs
Venezuela’s state oil company on Friday denied 4,000 contract workers have been laid off as the nation moves to comply with new OPEC production cuts. State oil company Petroleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA), dismissed reports that at least eight oil rigs have been halted and thousands of contract workers laid off. Vice President Eulogio Del Pino said in a statement that union leaders who made the allegations were lying for political reasons.
■ENGINEERING
IT flirting course on offer
Even the most quirky of computer nerds can learn to flirt with finesse thanks to a new “flirting course” being offered to budding IT engineers at Potsdam University south of Berlin. The 440 students enrolled in the master’s degree course will learn how to write flirtatious text messages and e-mails, impress people at parties and cope with rejection. Philip von Senftleben, an author and radio presenter who will teach the course, summed up his job as teaching how to “get someone else’s heart beating fast while yours stays calm.” The course, which starts next Monday, is part of the social skills section of the IT course and is designed to ease entry into the world of work. Students also learn body language, public speaking, stress management and presentation skills.
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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