The Taiwan High Speed Railway Corp (
Executives at the Railway Corp said that official documentation detailing the huge financial transaction has taken longer to prepare than both sides had expected, but declined to provide details behind the hold up.
Subsequently, the signing, which was originally set for today in Japan, will be pushed back by around two weeks, and would "definitely be signed no later than mid-December," the executives said.
But the executives denied local media speculation that the last minute hold-up was due to wrangling over the wording of certain legal aspects of the deal, saying that all areas of the agreement have been finalized.
The Railway Corp signed a memorandum of understanding with Taiwan Shinkansen in June confirming its purchase of the core electrical systems, including signalling, telecommunications and electrification equipment, and rolling stock.
Besides constructing these systems, Taiwan Shinkansen has also pledged to buy a 10 percent share in the Railway Corp, a condition that is suspected to have helped in edging out European bidder Eurotrain, for the deal late last year.
Eurotrain, a consortium between Siemens of Germany and Alstrom of France, claimed that Railway Corp's decision violated an earlier agreement between the two sides naming Eurotrain as the preferred bidder. The European consortium lost an appeal before the Taiwan High Court in June, which ruled that the earlier agreement did not guarantee Eurotrain the contract.
Export of the Shinkansen rail technology -- or bullet train -- by Taiwan Shinkansen, which is led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, will be the first time Japan's most famous train will glide along tracks outside of its home country.
The project, which is scheduled for completion in October 2005, will ferry passengers from Taipei to the nation's southern capital Kaohsiung in around 90 minutes, compared to 45 minutes by plane, and at a relatively cheaper price.
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