President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday apologized to residents of southern Taiwan over the damage caused by Typhoon Danas and torrential rains that followed in its wake in his fourth visit to the region since the storm struck last month.
The central government has allotted a NT$56 billion (US$1.88 billion) aid package to repair the damage caused by the typhoon and torrential rain, and enhance regional infrastructure, Lai said at the post-typhoon reconstruction command center in Tainan’s Sinying District (新營).
He also inspected storm-damaged houses and said that he hopes the public would consider the exceptional circumstances of Typhoon Danas when it judges the government’s performance.
Photo: Yang Chin-cheng, Taipei Times
Danas caused severe and unforeseen damage to energy and telecommunications grids in southern Taiwan, he said.
In addition, the three tropical storms that have approached Taiwan this year brought more total rainfall than Typhoon Morakot in 2009, the deadliest storm in the nation’s history, he said.
The government’s aid package — which features agricultural loans and subsidies for repairing damaged structures — aims to address the special challenges presented by the disaster, he said.
Farmers would receive natural disaster compensation in a cash handout upon request without conditions and be exempted from interest on a second mortgage they have for a year, he said.
The compensation rate for damage to fish farms, greenhouses and livestock facilities would be increased to 80 percent from 50 percent, with the local governments being instructed to expedite the process, he said.
Danas damaged about 30,000 structures in Tainan and another 10,000 structures in the rest of southern Taiwan in a record-high number of property damage cases, Lai said.
The central government has made an unprecedented arrangement with contractors in administrative regions to temporarily suspend work on local projects for reassignment to repair buildings in Tainan and Chiayi, he said.
Medium and severely low-income households can receive full subsidies for building repairs, while average-income families would be partially compensated, he said, adding that some construction workers could receive bonuses for making house repairs.
Authorities have detained three former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TMSC, 台積電) employees on suspicion of compromising classified technology used in making 2-nanometer chips, the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. Prosecutors are holding a former TSMC engineer surnamed Chen (陳) and two recently sacked TSMC engineers, including one person surnamed Wu (吳) in detention with restricted communication, following an investigation launched on July 25, a statement said. The announcement came a day after Nikkei Asia reported on the technology theft in an exclusive story, saying TSMC had fired two workers for contravening data rules on advanced chipmaking technology. Two-nanometer wafers are the most
Tsunami waves were possible in three areas of Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East, the Russian Ministry for Emergency Services said yesterday after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit the nearby Kuril Islands. “The expected wave heights are low, but you must still move away from the shore,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app, after the latest seismic activity in the area. However, the Pacific Tsunami Warning System in Hawaii said there was no tsunami warning after the quake. The Russian tsunami alert was later canceled. Overnight, the Krasheninnikov volcano in Kamchatka erupted for the first time in 600 years, Russia’s RIA
CHINA’s BULLYING: The former British prime minister said that he believes ‘Taiwan can and will’ protect its freedom and democracy, as its people are lovers of liberty Former British prime minister Boris Johnson yesterday said Western nations should have the courage to stand with and deepen their economic partnerships with Taiwan in the face of China’s intensified pressure. He made the remarks at the ninth Ketagalan Forum: 2025 Indo-Pacific Security Dialogue hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Prospect Foundation in Taipei. Johnson, who is visiting Taiwan for the first time, said he had seen Taiwan’s coastline on a screen on his indoor bicycle, but wanted to learn more about the nation, including its artificial intelligence (AI) development, the key technology of the 21st century. Calling himself an
South Korea yesterday said that it was removing loudspeakers used to blare K-pop and news reports to North Korea, as the new administration in Seoul tries to ease tensions with its bellicose neighbor. The nations, still technically at war, had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung. It said in June that Pyongyang stopped transmitting bizarre, unsettling noises along the border that had become a major nuisance for South Korean residents, a day after South Korea’s loudspeakers fell silent. “Starting today, the military has begun removing the loudspeakers,”
RSS