In spite of being mostly knocked offline, the Web site of Arab satellite news network Al-Jazeera was among the most sought-after on the Internet last week.
The Web portal Lycos reported that "Al-Jazeera" and variant spellings became its top search term last week, with three times more searches than "sex."
Al-Jazeera drew intense interest from Web surfers after it carried Iraqi TV footage of dead and captive US soldiers in Iraq. US TV networks had decided not to air footage of the corpses. Al-Jazeera later honored a US request to stop until families could be notified, a statement from the network said.
The Internet's leading search engine, Google, said "Al-Jazeera'' was the term that showed the greatest increase in the week ending March 31. Google does not report absolute rankings of search terms.
Hackers also homed in on Al-Jazeera, bringing down its Web site early last week in what the Web host called an attack characterized by a flood of bogus traffic. Hackers calling themselves the "Freedom Cyber Force Militia" diverted visitors to the English site to a page with a US flag.
The managing editor of Al-Jazeera's English site, Joanne Tucker, said it would be back up by yesterday and that steps were being taken to make the pages impervious to hacking attempts.
Al-Jazeera is based in Qatar. It is funded by Qatar's government but is an unusually independent voice in the Arab world. Its English Web site launched last week with the aim of giving Western audiences an Arab perspective.
WAITING GAME: The US has so far only offered a ‘best rate tariff,’ which officials assume is about 15 percent, the same as Japan, a person familiar with the matter said Taiwan and the US have completed “technical consultations” regarding tariffs and a finalized rate is expected to be released soon, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference yesterday, as a 90-day pause on US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs is set to expire today. The two countries have reached a “certain degree of consensus” on issues such as tariffs, nontariff trade barriers, trade facilitation, supply chain resilience and economic security, Lee said. They also discussed opportunities for cooperation, investment and procurement, she said. A joint statement is still being negotiated and would be released once the US government has made
NEW GEAR: On top of the new Tien Kung IV air defense missiles, the military is expected to place orders for a new combat vehicle next year for delivery in 2028 Mass production of Tien Kung IV (Sky Bow IV) missiles is expected to start next year, with plans to order 122 pods, the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) latest list of regulated military material showed. The document said that the armed forces would obtain 46 pods of the air defense missiles next year and 76 pods the year after that. The Tien Kung IV is designed to intercept cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to an altitude of 70km, compared with the 60km maximum altitude achieved by the Missile Segment Enhancement variant of PAC-3 systems. A defense source said yesterday that the number of
‘CRUDE’: The potential countermeasure is in response to South Africa renaming Taiwan’s representative offices and the insistence that it move out of Pretoria Taiwan is considering banning exports of semiconductors to South Africa after the latter unilaterally downgraded and changed the names of Taiwan’s two representative offices, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. On Monday last week, the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation unilaterally released a statement saying that, as of April 1, the Taipei Liaison Offices in Pretoria and Cape Town had been renamed the “Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg” and the “Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town.” Citing UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, it said that South Africa “recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole
Taiwanese exports to the US are to be subject to a 20 percent tariff starting on Thursday next week, according to an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump yesterday. The 20 percent levy was the same as the tariffs imposed on Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh by Trump. It was higher than the tariffs imposed on Japan, South Korea and the EU (15 percent), as well as those on the Philippines (19 percent). A Taiwan official with knowledge of the matter said it is a "phased" tariff rate, and negotiations would continue. "Once negotiations conclude, Taiwan will obtain a better
RSS