TAIPEI: Taiwan will resume mandatory street evacuation drills in its annual air-raid exercise later this month, including stopping traffic and ordering pedestrians to stay indoors, amid stepped up Chinese military manoeuvers around the island.
The resumption of the evacuations, which effectively shuts towns and cities across Taiwan for 30 minutes, is also happening against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which has renewed discussion in Taiwan about how best to react in the event of a Chinese attack.
China claims the democratically-run island as its territory.
Periodic air-raid drills are required by law in Taiwan, but the 30-minute mandatory street evacuations have been canceled for the past two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The defense ministry said it will resume the evacuation exercise across Taiwan in late July, during which sirens will sound on streets and an air-raid alert to ask people to seek shelter will be sent via text message.
“Only through thorough preparation and practice in peace time can we immediately demonstrate our overall combat capacity and lower the impact on people’s lives and property at war time,” ministry spokesperson Sun Li-Fang told a news briefing on Tuesday.
Sun said the air-raid drills will take place in a four-day span across Taiwan and will be carried out alongside its main island-wide annual Han Kuang military exercises that week.
In the capital Taipei, sirens will sound at 1:30 p.m. (0330 GMT) on July 25, during which vehicles will have to move to the side of the road and pedestrians wait indoors. Sirens will sound again 30 minutes later to give the all-clear.
China, which has not ruled out taking Taiwan by force, has stepped up its military activities near the island over the past two years or so, seeking to press it to accept its sovereignty claims.
Chinese fighter jets crossed the median line of the sensitive Taiwan Strait on Friday in what Taipei denounced as a provocation.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has made military modernization her top priority and has repeatedly vowed to defend the island, saying only its people can decide their future.
Taiwan to resume street evacuation drills for annual air-raid exercise
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Taiwan to resume street evacuation drills for annual air-raid exercise
- The defense ministry said it will resume the evacuation exercise across Taiwan in late July
- China, which has not ruled out taking Taiwan by force, has stepped up its military activities near the island
SpaceX acquires xAI in record-setting deal as Musk looks to unify AI and space ambitions
- The deal is the biggest M&A transaction of all time
- Deal values xAI at $250 billion, SpaceX at $1 trillion
Elon Musk said on Monday that SpaceX has acquired his artificial-intelligence startup xAI in a record-setting deal that unifies Musk’s AI and space ambitions by combining the rocket-and-satellite company with the maker of the Grok chatbot. The deal, first reported by Reuters last week, represents one of the most ambitious tie-ups in the technology sector yet, combining a space-and-defense contractor with a fast-growing AI developer whose costs are largely driven by chips, data centers and energy. It could also bolster SpaceX’s data-center ambitions as Musk competes with rivals like Alphabet’s Google, Meta, Amazon-backed Anthropic and OpenAI in the AI sector.
The transaction values SpaceX at $1 trillion, and xAI at $250 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI’s mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!” Musk said. The purchase of xAI sets a new record for the world’s largest M&A deal, a distinction held for more than 25 years when Vodafone bought Germany’s Mannesmann in a hostile takeover valued at $203 billion in 2000, according to data compiled by LSEG. The combined company of SpaceX and xAI is expected to price shares at about $527 each, another person familiar with the matter said. SpaceX was already the world’s most valuable privately held company, last valued at $800 billion in a recent insider share sale. XAI was last valued at $230 billion in November, according to the Wall Street Journal. The merger comes as the space company plans a blockbuster public offering this year that could value it at over $1.5 trillion, two people familiar with the matter said.
SpaceX, xAI and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The deal further consolidates Musk’s far-flung business empire and fortunes into a tighter, mutually reinforcing ecosystem – what some investors and analysts informally call the “Muskonomy” – which already includes Tesla, brain-chip maker Neuralink and tunnel firm the Boring Company. The world’s richest man has a history of merging his ventures together. Musk folded social media platform X into xAI through a share swap last year, giving the AI startup access to the platform’s data and distribution. In 2016, he used Tesla’s stock to buy his solar-energy company SolarCity.
The agreement could draw scrutiny from regulators and investors over governance, valuation and conflicts of interest given Musk’s overlapping leadership roles across multiple firms, as well as the potential movement of engineers, proprietary technology and contracts between entities.
SpaceX also holds billions of dollars in federal contracts with NASA, the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies, which all have some authority to review M&A transactions for national security and other risks.
