Residents of Matsu (
The planned cut is part of the MND's second-stage military restructuring project aimed at establishing an elite deterrent force in the face of China's threat.
According to the MND's newly sanctioned restructuring plan, the total number of military personnel stationed on the three outlying islands of Kinmen, Matsu and Penghu will be trimmed to about 10,000 by 2008.
Opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Tsao Erh-chung (
"Unless China renounces the option of using force against Taiwan, we should not unilaterally disarm ourselves. Without adequate defense deployment, Matsu's security will be at stake," Tsao said.
Chen Shu-lien (陳書廉), president of the Matsu Chamber of Commerce, and several senior executives of the organization paid a visit to Lienchiang County Commissioner Chen Shui-sheng (陳雪生) Thursday to express their concern about the MND's troops reduction plan.
"Because of the government's gradual reduction of garrison troops in Matsu in recent years, Chinese fishing boats have often poached in waters near Matsu or even come ashore for illegal trading. If the number of troops is cut further, the security situation will get even worse," Chen Shu-lien said.
Worse still, he said, Matsu's economic development will also be seriously affected if the number of garrison troops is further trimmed.
The Matsu island group is under the jurisdiction of the Lienchiang County Government. It has only a limited number of civilian residents. For years, its economy has relied heavily on garrison troops' consumption.
For security and economic well-being, Chen Shu-lien urged the county government to push the central government and the MND to rethink the Matsu troop reduction plan.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
RSS