■ Aviation
CAL slams HK over report
China Airlines (CAL) will say at a public hearing next week that Hong Kong's Civil Aviation Department manipulated data to conclude that one of its pilots was responsible for a plane crash at the territory's airport in 1999, the South China Morning Post reported yesterday, citing unidentified people. An expert's report by the airline says the department "systematically constructed" findings to conclude that pilot Gerrardo Lettich caused the Boeing MD-11 to crash, killing three people and injuring more than 200, the paper said. The plane overturned while landing during a typhoon. CAL will say that the failure by another plane, which had difficulty landing before its jetliner, to alert air traffic controllers about wind-shear problems contributed to the crash, the paper said. The arguments were presented two weeks ago to the aviation authority, which is considering reopening its inquiry into the crash, according to the newspaper.
■ Earthquakes
Temblor shakes Ilan
An earthquake measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale swayed buildings in northeastern Taiwan yesterday, seismologists said, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties. The tremor hit at 1:35pm with an epicenter 19.6km northeast of Ilan, the Seismology Center said. The tremor originated 79.3km below sea level, it said. "We could feel our building was shaken as the quake hit," an official with the Ilan County Government's Fire Bureau said.
■ Society
Disaster units to combine
The nation's three airborne disaster-relief units are to be integrated into a single squad to upgrade their overall operational efficiency, according to a Ministry of the Interior report released yesterday. According to the report, the ministry has drafted a statute to pave the way for integration of the airborne firefighting team and the airborne police squad, both of which are under the ministry, and the airborne disaster-relief division under the Civil Aeronautics Administration. Once the statute is passed by the legislature, the unified national airborne-rescue-and-disaster-relief squad will have 35 aircraft under its control, including 20 UH-1H helicopters and three B-234 helicopters.
■ Culture
Hakka to hold conference
A five-day global conference on Hakka culture will open in Kaohsiung on Wednesday. An official of the Cabinet's Hakka Affairs Commission said yesterday that the conference is aimed at strengthening the cooperation among Hakka communities throughout the world. The commission has made great efforts to help promote Hakka culture and its language since its establishment in 2001, the official said. The commission hopes to develop Taiwan into a global center of Hakka culture, he said.
■ Technology
Robot arms wow visitors
Two robotic arms designed and constructed by students yesterday attracted the attention of visitors at an event held to mark the fourth anniversary of the National Chiayi University's founding. One of the robotic arms can carefully pick up a bottle of water, pour the contents into a cup, pick up the cup and hand it to a visitor. The other arm plays the guitar and is controlled by musical scores programmed into a computer. Professors of the university said they were happy to see that their students are able to apply the knowledge they have gained in the classroom.
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