■ Politics
Rally not `off-limits': KMT
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said yesterday that it will leave the decision of whether to join today's march against China's "Anti-Secession" Law up to individual members."This is an event organized by the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP]. The political platform, national ideology and stance on cross-strait relations are all different from the KMT. If there are party members that want to participate in the rally, then the KMT is unable to prevent them from joining. However, we trust the judgement of our party members," KMT spokesman Chang Jung-kung (張榮恭) said. He added that if there are KMT party members who attend to show their support of the Republic of China and call upon President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to uphold his "four noes" policy, then the KMT will not "hinder" them. Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), a KMT vice chairman, said yesterday that he was unsure whether or he would attend.
■ Fisheries
Seminar set for Monday
A seminar on deep-sea fishing manpower issues will be held on Monday as part of the government's efforts to formulate new policy and strategies for sustainable fishery industry development, a Council of Agriculture official said yesterday. The seminar, to be organized by the council's Fishery Administration, will focus on the supply and demand of fishing manpower, upgrading the quality of the industry's workforce and improvement of the shipboard working environment, the official said. The one-day seminar will bring together officials from city and county governments, representatives of fishing industry associations, academics and experts to explore manpower-related problems faced by fishing-boat owners and feasible measures to resolve them, the official said. The seminar will be the first of a series of forums to be held this year on issues affecting the fishing industry.
■ Politics
KMT revises nominee list
The KMT has released a list on Thursday night of three principles it will use when considering who it will nominate for the National Assembly Representatives' election on May 14. It said it would rank Chen Chin-jang (陳金讓), the party's nominee for the assembly's speaker, as No.1, while city mayors and county commissioners are to be ranked outside of the number the party expects to win seats. Chen is a former National Assembly speaker. Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was originally ranked No.1 in the party's original list of nominees but on the new list he is ranked 135 out of 160. Penghu County Commissioner Lai Feng-wei (賴峰偉 ) is No.126 on the new list, the highest of any local official. The statement said the changes reflect the party's emphasis on academics and youth.
■ National security
Official punished
The Judicial Yuan announced yesterday that the president's former chief aide-de-camp, Lieutenant General Chen Tsai-fu (陳再福), would be barred for one year from working in government for failing in his responsibilities in connection with the March 19 assassination attempt on President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (陳水扁). The report said Chen Tsai-fu's poor leadership contributed to the incident. The report said Chen Tsai-fu failed to ask the president and vice-president to put on bullet-proof vests and he broke rules regarding motorcade formation, which resulted in the failure to properly guard the two leaders.
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
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read: