■Direct links
Construction sector upbeat
The domestic construction sector expressed hope yesterday for direct links with China and urged the government to seize the opportunity to set up links as soon as possible. Lai Cheng-i (賴正鎰), chairman of the Taiwan Construction Development Federation, said that with the end of Saturday's Taipei and Kaohsiung mayor and council elections, the government now should move swiftly to establish direct trade, transport and postal links with China to stimulate the economy. According to Lai, the domestic business community has high expectations for the links, which are widely viewed as an effective way to attract tourists from across the Strait and to help boost industry, including the real estate market.
■ Airport
CAA rejects Sungshan
Although Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has won re-election as mayor of Taipei, his idea of making the city's Sungshan Airport a base for cross-strait flights is unfeasible because of technical problems, an aviation official said yesterday. Noting that whether the airport should be one of the airports used for cross-strait flights is a political question to be answered by the central government, Chang Kuo-cheng (張國政), director-general of the Civil Aero-nautics Administration (CAA), said that the airport is incapable of accommodating heavy flight traffic given that it has only one runway, no customs and no extra land for expansion. The airport's limited capacity is also the reason why it is used only for domestic flights, Chang said. The government favors an election proposal of the DPP's unsuccessful mayoral candidate Lee Ying-yuan (李應元), who advocated the relocation of the airport to Taoyuan.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
HOSPITALITY HIT: Hotels in Hualien have an occupancy rate of 10 percent, down from 30 percent before the earthquake, a Tourism Administration official said The Executive Yuan yesterday unveiled a stimulus package of vouchers and subsidies to revive tourism in Hualien County following a quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. The tremor on April 3, which killed at least 17 people and left two others missing, caused the county an estimated NT$3 billion (US$92.7 million) in damages. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is to issue vouchers worth NT$200 at the price of NT$100 for purchases at the Dongdamen Night Market (東大門夜市) in Hualien City to boost spending, a ministry official told a news conference after a Cabinet meeting in Taipei. The ministry plans to issue 18,400