Instead of restricting building in all 33 towns (
Vice Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (
"Residents who live within the 33 towns most seriously hit by the quake, but beyond the fault line, can begin rebuilding once that announcement is made," Liu said. However, the exact distance from the fault-line has not yet been decided.
"This temporary building restriction is probably only going to be needed for one or two months. The permanent building restrictions and prohibited areas for re-building will be designated at the end of this year, once the comprehensive seismic map, with a 1-to-1,000 ratio, is released at the end of this year," Liu said.
In the meantime, officials are collecting and organizing about 800,000 pieces of information regarding housing. According to an urban and housing development official, the current administrative housing map (
"The time-frame corresponds to the Council for Economic Planning and Development's (CEPD,
"Residents' own wishes for their communities are essential to the success of urban renewal plans in the quake-hit areas. Residents, government officials, and professional groups can form a community reconstruction council (社區重建委員會) to discuss how the destroyed towns can be rebuilt," he said.
According to Chiang, the discussion process of the community reconstruction councils to decide the best form of reconstruction -- including those in cities, agriculture areas, and aboriginal villages -- is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. So, if a village needs to be relocated, the permanent building restriction map will be released in time for their reference.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts