Regional tourism experts met yesterday in Vientiane to prepare for next week's meeting of ASEAN tourism ministers against a backdrop of Asia's growing bird flu crisis.
Around 1,700 industry professionals and government officials will take part in the nine-day ASEAN Tourism Forum in the Lao capital to draw up plans to boost the region's tourism industry.
On Wednesday their conclusions will be presented to tourism ministers from the 10 members of ASEAN, as well as ministers from China, Japan and South Korea.
Vientiane will then host a tourism fair bringing together private businesses and tourism institutions, which will run until the end of the week.
Asia's travel sector has so far survived the initial onslaught of the bird flu epidemic, which has hit 10 countries in the region, including Laos, and resulted in the deaths of at least 10 people.
Industry analysts said travellers have not shunned the region this time because unlike the pneumonia-like SARS virus, it has not been proven that bird flu can be transmitted through human contact.
Last year's SARS outbreak wreaked havoc on East Asia's travel and tourism industries.
Lao foreign ministry spokesman Yong Chanthalangsy said bird flu would definitely be one of the talking points during the forum, but he stressed that visitors to the country faced minimal risk.
"We want to reassure people that so far we have not identified any transmission of bird flu to humans in Laos."
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to