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Taiwan Quick Take

■ Accidents
Falling tree injures student
A Taiwanese woman studying in New Zealand was in critical condition in a hospital yesterday after being crushed by a tree blown down during a storm, news reports said. The woman, aged about 21, suffered serious head injuries when a tree fell on her near Waikato University in Hamilton, as winds of up to 150kph lashed the North Island on Wednesday. Parents of the student, whose name was not released, were flying to New Zealand, reports said.

■ Diplomacy
Okinawa office established
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs established a representative office in Naha, Okinawa on Feb. 1, deputy secretary-general of the ministry-affiliated Association of East Asian Relations James Liao (廖經邦) said yesterday. The new office aims to deal with the increasingly frequent trade interactions between Taiwan and Okinawa, said Liao, adding that it had nothing to do with Taiwan's stance on the Diaoyutais (釣魚台), an island chain that Taiwan claims sovereignty over. Okinawa comprises the Ryukyu Islands and Diaoyutais. In the past, Taiwan's representative office in Okinawa existed as a non-governmental organization.

■ Travel
No more stamps
Passengers leaving the country no longer need to have their boarding passes stamped, the National Immigration Agency said. Immigration officers at the country's international airports put a stamp on departing passengers' boarding pass as a part of passenger identification procedures, but the agency now considers this action a waste of time. It said that if each stamp took two seconds, the total time saved by the new measure, applied to an estimated 20,000 passengers each day, would be 11 hours. The agency added that stamping boarding passes was no longer practiced in other nations and contributed little to security.

■ Politics
Majority favor referendum
Nearly 85 percent of Taiwanese believe a referendum should be held whenever Taiwan signs agreements with China related to its sovereignty, a poll released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) showed. The poll showed that 84.8 percent of respondents favored referendums, compared with 9.7 percent who said they were not necessary. Meanwhile, 83.2 percent said only Taiwanese were entitled to define the cross-strait status quo, compared with 1.7 percent who said that Beijing should define it and 6.4 percent who said both sides should have a say. The polls also showed that 69.2 percent thought Taiwan was an independent and sovereign country, compared with 14.6 percent who said Taiwan was part of China. The poll was conducted on March 7 and March 8. A total of 1,034 samples were collected.

■ Litigation
Court rules against MOEA
The Taipei High Administrative Court yesterday withdrew a NT$5 million fine that the Ministry of Economic Affairs imposed on Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) founder Richard Chang (張汝京) in 2005. The ministry alleged that Chang, who it says was then a Taiwanese citizen, invested illegally in China. In addition to fining Chang, the ministry also sought to force him to withdraw his investment within six months. Chang invested in Shanghai-based SMIC in December 2000 without obtaining permission from the ministry, claimg he was a US citizen.

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