| Japan Stocks Advance After Yen Weakens, GDP Growth Accelerates | | Posted Monday, March 12, 2007 2:48:27 PM by Blog57 Team | | March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Japanese stocks climbed for a third day. Exporters including Sony Corp. paced gains after the yen weakened the most in eight months against the dollar in New York. ``Now that the yen is on a weakening trend again, it's erased some of the pessimism'' surrounding exporters, said Mitsushige Akino, who oversees $468 million in assets at Ichiyoshi Investment Management Co. in Tokyo. Domestic demand-related shares such as Mitsui Fudosan Co. rose after the government said Japan's fourth quarter gross domestic product grew at a faster pace than originally estimated. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average advanced 55.42, or 0.3 percent, to 17,219.46, as of 1:32 p.m. in Tokyo. The broader Topix index climbed 3.01, or 0.2 percent, to 1733.32.... | |
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| | | Taiwan Contract Chipmaker UMC Posts Sharp Rise in 4Q Profit on ... | | Posted Saturday, February 10, 2007 12:48:02 PM by Blog57 Team | | TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - Taiwan's United Microelectronics Corp., the world's second-biggest contract chipmaker by revenue, reported a sharp on-year increase in its fourth-quarter net profit Wednesday, boosted by income from share disposal gains. The October-December net profit totaled 5.69 billion New Taiwan dollars (US$172.43 million; euro132.79 million), a rise of 87 percent from the NT$3.04 billion posted for the same period in 2005, UMC said. Revenue for the quarter was NT$26.11 billion (US$791.23 million; euro609.42 million), down from NT$27.47 billion in the same period one year earlier, the company said. .... | |
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| | | Camera obscurer? | | Posted Wednesday, November 15, 2006 12:49:07 PM by Blog57 Team | | It's about 3,000, comes without a lens and lacks some of the key features found in cameras costing a fraction of the price. Can Leica, one of the foremost names in modern photography, crack it in the digital market? The photos are often iconic, even the photographers are sometimes household names, but the camera... Who cares what brand of kit captured the soldier falling, mid-stride, to his death in the Spanish Civil War, or the hippy carefully planting a flower in the barrel of a National Guardsmen's gun during an anti-Vietnam protest (see image above)? Yet without Leica, these moments of history, frozen forever in time, might never have been recorded. For much of the 20th Century, Leica was the last word in reportage photography; to serious photographers what Kodak was to happy-go-lucky holiday snappers.... | |
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| | | Deadly voyages | | Posted Tuesday, November 14, 2006 6:47:47 PM by Blog57 Team | | Filmmaker Dick Colthurst went to Mount Everest hoping to learn why people risk their lives trying to reach the world's tallest summit. After spending 48 days in that unforgiving landscape and slogging through hundreds of hours of footage, he has to admit that he failed. "While I admire what they do and how they do it, and the sheer mental and physical strength that it takes to do it, I'm honestly no nearer to understanding why they do it," Colthurst said recently. But Colthurst and his crew did succeed in capturing in vivid and often disturbing detail the hell climbers put themselves through to be able to say they've been to "the roof of the world." "Everest: Beyond the Limit," which begins its six-week run at 9 tonight on the Discovery Channel, chronicles the journey of eight men during the 2006 spring climbing season — the second-deadliest on the Himalayan peak that rises more than 29,000 feet.... | |
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| | | Xenon Flashtube suits digital and mobile phone cameras. | | Posted Saturday, November 11, 2006 6:51:56 AM by Blog57 Team | | Trim Xe(TM) line is available in various sizes and power levels with lamp diameters as small as 1.3 mm to meet demands of digital photography applications. Intense, short light discharge freezes motion, lights objects at long distances, and provides clear photos without need for brightness modification, contrast correction, or image stabilization. Xenon Flash technology enables uniform light distribution and color temperature close to natural sunlight. Additional information provided by manufacturer .... | |
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| | | Sachin, More slam Aussies | | Posted Tuesday, November 07, 2006 2:49:48 PM by Blog57 Team | | Mumbai, Nov 6: Mr Sharad Pawar, Board of Control for Cricket in India chief, being nudged by the Australians during the Champions Trophy prize distribution ceremony evoked sharp criticism from Sachin Tendulkar and other former cricketers who described the behaviour as unpleasant. Eager to hold the trophy and pose for the cameras with his team-mates, Australian skipper Ricky Ponting was seen tapping Pawar on the shoulder as a gesture to leave the stage. Tendulkar, who said he had only heard about the incident from others, termed it an unpleasant incident and an uncalled for behaviour by the world champions. I wasnt watching the proceedings because I was travelling, but from what I heard, it was an unpleasant incident and was uncalled for, the ace batsman said. Firstly, it should not have happened.... | |
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| | | Earnings at Fujifilm come into sharp focus | | Posted Friday, November 03, 2006 10:51:18 PM by Blog57 Team | | Fujifilm posted a 10.7% increase in net profit in the fiscal second quarter, with brisk sales of display panel parts and digital copiers offsetting poor sales of colour films and digital cameras, the company said yesterday. The Tokyo-based company, which adopted a holding company structure on October 1 and changed its name from Fuji Photo Film, said its net profit rose to 18.99bn (85.8m) in the quarter ended September 30 from 17.15bn a year earlier. Quarterly sales climbed 2.2% to 601.94bn in the July-September quarter from 589.19bn. A 14.2% jump in the information solutions business like display panel parts, medical products and digital copiers and a 3.1% rise in copiers and other office-related products combined to offset a 12.7% drop in sales of information solutions sector products such as color films and digital cameras.... | |
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| | | Chips Snap: Semiconductors Rise | | Posted Tuesday, October 31, 2006 6:50:09 AM by Blog57 Team | | Semiconductor stocks moved up in light trading Monday afternoon, as investors caught their breath after an avalanche of earnings reports from chip makers over the last two weeks. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Sector Index edged up a little over one percent, at 458.12, with 16 of 19 components showing gains. Flash memory maker SanDisk Corp. shares climbed 81 cents to $48.85, despite a somewhat skeptical note from Baird analyst Tristan Gerra. "Our checks as of late last week indicate very weak NOR flash bookings for the month of December, in sharp contrast with the third-quarter, and suggesting a drastic reduction in lead times," Gerra wrote in a note to clients. NOR is a type of flash memory used in consumer electronics, such as MP3 players and digital cameras. Gerra cut his 2007 revenue estimate for SanDisk to $3.31 billion, down from $3.54 billion, and reduced his 2007 adjusted earnings estimate to $2.65 per share, down from $2.82.... | |
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| | | Cell phone cameras help amateur moviemakers | | Posted Friday, October 27, 2006 2:49:05 PM by Blog57 Team | | PARIS -- "Silence on the set," ordered movie director Xavier Mussel as he grabbed his cell phone -- not to make a call but to film another scene for his short film. Cheap, easy and accessible, mobiles-as-movie cameras are breaking the motion picture mold, putting a touch of Hollywood into amateur filmmakers' hands. How-to workshops have sprung up from Boston to Abu Dhabi to Rio de Janeiro, and Paris just held its second film festival devoted exclusively to movies shot with cells. Some 8,500 visitors attended screenings at the recent three-day Pocket Films Festival at Paris' Pompidou modern-art museum. In addition to nearly 100 shorts, the fare included three feature-length films -- all shot on cells. "What we're seeing is the democratization of filmmaking," said festival director Laurence Herszberg.... | |
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| | | Taipei: Yes, we have no bananas | | Posted Friday, October 27, 2006 12:49:36 PM by Blog57 Team | | TAIPEI - Nowadays in Taiwan anything can become very political, even eating bananas. Overproduction of the fruit has become an issue in the island's internal politics and relations with mainland China. Without a government subsidy, banana harvest time usually means headache time for farmers in Taiwan. The headache, furthermore, might turn into a nightmare next March, when the real banana-harvest season arrives on southern Taiwan's major farms. Evidence of an orange oversupply is also setting off the alarm bells. In Taiwan's frenzied media atmosphere, senior government officials must not only establish and implement policies, they must also demonstrate their enthusiasm for them in front of the cameras by eating farm produce.... | |
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