Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp will begin speed tests of the high-speed rail next week, hoping it can start operating in October as scheduled, the company said yesterday.
"We will gradually raise the speed from 120 kilometers per hour [kph] to 315 kph," said Ted Chia (
"The transport ministry has asked us to announce the date of the launch of the high-speed rail by mid-September. Our goal is to launch it at the end of October as scheduled," he said.
Chia said construction is ahead of schedule.
"Construction of the rail and stations has been completed 95 percent, but the core system is a little behind schedule," he said.
The 345km railway will link Taipei and Kaohsiung. It had been scheduled to start running on Dec. 31.
The Japanese-built high-speed train will have a maximum operation speed of 300kph, although its speed can hit 315kph.
Taiwan Shinkensen Corp (TSC,
THSRC has ordered 30 sets of the 700T rail cars from Japan and has taken delivery of 20 sets. Each set consists of 12 carriages seating a total of 986 passengers.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle