Amazon.com Inc's list of its best-selling books in the past 24 hours looks like a cross-section of its customers' psyches: the predictions of Nostradamus, photographs of Manhattan skyscrapers and studies of terrorism.
Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies by John Hogue, published in paperback in 1999, topped the list, perhaps because customers wanted to see how closely the 16th-century French astrologer foretold Tuesday's destruction by terrorists of the World Trade Center's twin towers. In all, four Nostradamus books, two on the World Trade Center and one about terrorism dominated the No. 1 online bookseller's top 10 list.
Second on the list was Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's World Trade Center (1999) by Angus Kress Gillespie, with a cover photo of the now-gone buildings.
Simon Reeve's The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama Bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism (1999), an account of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and subsequent attacks by a Bin Laden-funded terrorist, held the No. 3 slot.
Books detailing the prophecies of Nostradamus may have become more popular through the day as many Americans opened their computer in-boxes to find an e-mail purporting to quote the astrologer as saying the collapse of ``twin brothers torn apart by chaos'' would spark World War III.
The e-mail is a hoax, according to experts. "The second quatrain is entirely made-up, and the first quatrain is composed of lines taken from two completely different prophecies of Nostradamus linked together for effect," said snopes.com, a Web site devoted to countering Internet scams and hoaxes.
Americans hungry for more information related to Tuesday's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington jammed the Internet with requests in the past few days. On Yahoo Inc's Web site, the top searches were for World Trade Center, Pentagon, Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan and Nostradamus.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS