HOUSING
Hundreds to be demolished
The New Taipei City Government plans to start tearing down 205 illegal rooftop dwellings on Friday in the wake of a fatal fire last month, Public Works Department chief Chu Ti-chih (朱愓之) said. The fire on Nov. 22 killed nine people in a four-story building in Jhonghe District (中和), which had an illegally constructed fifth floor that was partitioned into 13 rooms. The city has been tearing down illegally constructed additions to buildings even before the fire occurred, Illegal Construction Demolition Corps deputy head Chen Chia-hsing (陳嘉興) said. To stop unscrupulous landlords from building illegal structures and partitioning them to make a profit from renting them out, the city had launched a special investigation in 2015, which has so far uncovered 930 structures, of which 725 have been torn down, he said. The demolition corps would start dismantling illegal dwellings even if there are people living in them, Chen said.
ENTERTAINMENT
Actor wins Singapore award
Taiwanese actor Tsai Chen-nan (蔡振南) won the best actor in a leading role award at the 22nd Asian Television Awards in Singapore on Friday last week. Tsai took home the award for his portrayal in the mini-series She’s Family (媽媽不見了) of an old male chauvinist who has diabetes and urinary incontinence, and cannot take care of himself. Tsai’s character must rely on his daughter to take care of him after his wife, played by Yang Kui-mei (楊貴媚), walks out on the family. Yang won the best supporting actress award for her role in the mini-series. In total, Taiwanese collected five awards, including best cinematography for Far and Away (外鄉女), best original screenplay for Life Plan A and B (荼蘼), and best terrestrial channel of the year for Formosa Television.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
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