■ Society
Multicultural unions rising
Multicultural marriages have become increasingly popular as one in every 5.5 married couples has a foreign spouse, according to statistics released yesterday by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (主計處). The figures show that more than 46,000 couples were married this year between January and last month, a 4.5 percent increase over the same period last year. Of the total, over 3,500 spouses were Chinese and more than 4,900 were foreigners. As the number of people tying the knot is increasing, so is the number of those severing the knot. Over 15,000 couples were divorced between January and last month, a 2.4 percent increase over the same period last year. Of the total, 2,155 of the divorced spouses were Chinese, while 803 were foreigners.
■ Travel
Dysentery strikes again
Authorities from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported fresh cases of dysentery among Taiwanese tourists who recently returned from trips to Bali. Three people who visited Bali between March 25 and April 1, were confirmed by CDC laboratories to have contracted bacillary dysentery, said Lai Ming-ho, chief of the CDC's quarantine and disease prevention division. Twenty-six other tour group members have been tracked down and have tested negative for dysentery, while the remaining 10 have yet to be examined, Lai said. A dysentery outbreak in Bali has scared some tourists away from the island since last November after 111 Taiwanese were confirmed to have contracted the disease. However, the number of Taiwanese visitors to Bali has picked up again this year.
■ Travel
Visa status restored
South Africa's 90-day visa-free treatment for Taiwanese will stand, an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Chang Pei-chi (張北齊), director-general of the ministry's Department of African Affairs, noted that the Pretoria government had originally granted the preferential treatment to Taiwanese, but after heavy pressure from China -- whose citizens do not enjoy the same treatment despite Beijing's formal diplomatic relations with Pretoria -- South Africa was forced to cancel the favorable visa situation for Taiwanese. But the change was met with steep opposition, and the South African high court ruled on April 6 that the revocation of the visa privileges for Taiwanese must be rescinded, leaving the 90-day, visa-free treatment intact. The ministry will continue to follow the situation very closely, Chang said.
■ Politics
Nutritionists reined in
The legislature passed an amendment to the Nutritionist Law yesterday to impose stricter regulations. The amendment stipulates that if beauty salons want to offer consultation on nutrition, they have to hire qualified nutritionists who have served in a medical center for over three years as consultants. The nutritionists will have to offer the advice personally to the customers when the customers are seeking health evaluations or diet consultations, and the nutritionists will need to keep the customers' information confidential. Meanwhile, the beauty salons have to display the nutritionists' licenses in public. If a nutritionist rents his license out and is discovered, his license may be revoked.
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