■ Expatriates
No change at TAS
It remained business as usual at the Taipei American School yesterday despite the fact that a US-led war against Iraq is looming. School authorities said they have not adopted any special measures to deal with the situation so far. But a spokesman said that if there are any special developments, the school will tackle them properly. Since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, police have listed the Tienmu school as subject to "strengthened protection" and have assigned more officers to stand guard and patrol the vicinity. At the moment, the spokesman said, all classes and activities are proceeding normally. There has not been any significant increase in the number of parents who come to pick their children up from school, he added.
■ Edcation
Student roll analyzed
More than one-fourth of the 12,000-odd overseas Chinese students currently seeking advanced studies in Taiwan are Chinese-Malaysians, making them the highest percentage of overseas Chinese students in Taiwan, education sources said yesterday. Chinese-Malaysians who are members of a private Malaysia-Taiwan educational promotion organization said Malaysia's becoming the top source of overseas Chinese students in Taiwan indicates that Taiwan's overseas Chinese education project that has been carried out in Malaysia over the past 30 years has borne fruit. Currently, there are about 30,000 Chinese-Malaysians in Malaysia who have studied in Taiwan's colleges or universities.
■ Water
Drought looming
With water levels falling in reservoirs in northern Taiwan, a second phase of water restrictions might soon be necessary, the Water Resources Agency said yesterday. Chen Sen-hsien (陳伸賢), deputy director of the agency, said that arrangements had also been made to produce artificial rain this afternoon in the water catchment areas of the Feitsui Reservoir in Taipei County and the Shihmen Reservoir in neighboring Taoyuan County. The announcement comes despite a Central Weather Bureau forecast that approaching cold fronts may bring rain to northern Taiwan in the next few days. As of 2pm yesterday, the water level of the Feitsui Reservoir -- the prime source of water for the greater Taipei area -- had dropped to 143.56m, or 40.51 percent of its capacity. The water level of the Shihmen Reservoir -- the major source for the Taoyuan area -- stood at 218.33m, or 28.5 percent of its capacity.
■ Oil
CPC says supplies enough
The state-run Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC) will seek to ensure sufficient oil supplies should the US attack Iraq in the coming days, a CPC executive said yesterday. According to CPC general manager Pan Wen-yen (潘文炎), current oil security reserves of the CPC will be enough to satisfy domestic demand for at least 110 days. Private supplies could last another 60 days. The state-run company has recently raised its security reserves to more than 110 days, including inbound oil shipments, to ensure that the domestic economy will not be affected by the war, Pan said. He made the remarks after US President George W. Bush issued a 48-hour ultimatum for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to step down or face an invasion. Pan further said that the CPC will do its utmost to maintain stable oil prices once a war breaks out.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift