WikiLeaks faced a fresh threat to its survival on Saturday as the online payment service PayPal cut off the account used for donations to the whistleblowing Web site.
WikiLeaks is already fighting to stay on the Internet. It switched its domain to Switzerland because its original Web address was shut down by a US provider, as it continues to release thousands of classified US diplomatic cables.
At the same time, Sweden has issued an amended international arrest warrant for WikiLeaks’ frontman Julian Assange, who is believed to be in Britain, and the Times newspaper reported he could be arrested next week.
In a new blow to the Web site, the US-based PayPal, which is owned by auctions group eBay, announced it would stop taking donations for WikiLeaks thus cutting off a key source of its income.
“PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal acceptable use policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity,” it said in a statement.
WikiLeaks blamed “US government pressure” for the PayPal ban, in a message on its Twitter feed.
Assange broke cover on Friday to say in an online chat that he had increased security after receiving death threats.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
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