■ 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.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai