President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday touted Taiwanese talent, technology and supporting policies to keep the nation competitive in the coming artificial intelligence and Internet of things (IoT) era.
Speaking at the opening of the 2018 Smart City Summit and Expo in Taipei, Tsai cited the proliferation of Wi-Fi services, including on all Taiwan High Speed Rail cabins, as an example of the small changes that demonstrate Taiwan’s efforts in pushing “smart” cities.
“Taiwan plays an indispensable role in the global supply chain of the information and communication technology [ICT] industry,” she said. “In addition to having a solid technical foundation, domestic companies have proactively invested in developing AIoT [artificial intelligence of things], while the government pushes the Asia Silicon Valley Development Agency [ASVDA] project and other programs to create test fields.”
In keeping up with the development of smart cities, Taiwan last year passed the Financial Technology Innovation and Experiment Act (金融科技發展與創新實驗條例) and financial technology firms can start applying to use the regulatory sandbox in May, she said, adding that regulations for experimenting with uncrewed vehicles are being drafted.
“Taiwan has been a leader in the ICT era, and we will definitely keep up with the AIoT era,” Tsai said.
More than 120 city government heads leading about 300 delegations from 33 nations and territories are expected to take part in the exhibition, and exchange ideas about smart city development, the Taipei Department of Information Technology said.
The exhibition is forecast to attract more than 30,000 experts in related fields over the four-day period, the department said.
The Taipei City Government has set up 42 booths this year, based on the theme “Smart Taipei, International Connecting,” to exhibit Taipei’s smart city efforts in seven aspects — transportation, public housing, healthcare, education, innovation, ecological community and security, Taipei Deputy Mayor Charles Lin (林欽榮) said.
Besides Taipei, eight local governments have also set up their own booths at the expo, while the ASVDA project has booths to showcase seven other cities and counties, Lin said.
With the support of major domestic technology firms, Taipei has teamed up with the five other special municipalities and several major cities around the world to form the Global Organization of Smart Cities, Department of Information Technology Director Lee Wei-bin (李維斌) said.
The exposition, organized by the Taipei City Government, the Taipei Computer Association and Taiwan Smart City Solutions Alliance, is being held at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching