■ INTERNET
Canada shy of `Street View'
The "Street View" feature of Google Maps, with its close-up views of city streets and recognizable shots of people, could violate a Canadian law protecting individual privacy, officials said on Wednesday. Google Inc introduced street-level map views in May, giving Web users a series of panoramic, 360-degree images of nine US cities. Some of the random pictures feature people in informal poses who can clearly be identified. Canada's Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart wrote to Google early last month asking for more details. She said if the Street View product were expanded to Canada without being amended, it could well violate privacy laws.
■ REAL ESTATE
China to clamp down further
China's central bank is likely to clamp down further on property speculation in a bid to curb soaring real estate prices, state media said yesterday. New regulations, which could be released as early as this week, will specifically target people who buy a second apartment, the China Daily reported, citing an unnamed official at the bank. The rules are expected to require second-time home buyers to make a down payment of 40 percent, as opposed to as little as 20 percent for first-time home buyers, the paper said.
■ AVIATION
Bombardier grounds Q-400s
Plane maker Bombardier ordered the grounding of at least 40 percent of its Q-400 turboprop planes after a Scandinavian Airlines aircraft skidded off a runway with 52 people aboard, the second such incident in three days. No one was injured on Wednesday when the landing gear failed, forcing the emergency touchdown in Lithuania. However, the accident followed the crash landing late last week of a Scandinavian Airlines flight that suffered a similar failure in Denmark, injuring five people. The grounding Wednesday forced the cancelation of at least 200 flights worldwide.
■ LABOR
HK bar benders end strike
One of Hong Kong's longest-running industrial strikes has ended after 36 days, with hundreds of specialist construction workers accepting a 14-percent pay rise and slightly reduced working hours. The strike had grounded work at dozens of construction sites for more than a month and laid bare the plight of workers in the city -- where the wealth gap has widened noticeably since 1997. After the latest in a string of marathon meetings on Wednesday night, around 200 bar-bending metal workers voted to accept a daily wage of HK$860 (US$110). Working hours were cut from nine to eight hours.
■ AVIATION
Airbus trims management
Thomas Enders, newly installed chief executive at Airbus, on Wednesday streamlined his management committee at the struggling European aircraft maker. Enders, a German named to head Airbus in July under a management overhaul, reduced the committee from 12 to nine members while trying to maintain a balance between French and German interests in the company. The new team comprises four Germans, three French nationals, an American and a Briton. Committee member Thierry Baril of France was handed the delicate task of heading the human resources department at a time when Airbus is implementing a sweeping restructuring that should see the elimination of 10,000 jobs.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
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