■ TRAVEL
Taitung-Japan flights set
Direct round-trip charter flights from Taitung to Japan are scheduled to start in May to boost tourism in eastern Taiwan. From May 1, travelers will be able to fly direct from Hokkaido to Taitung and vice versa on five-day package tours, which will cost less and offer shorter travel time than other routes, Taitung County Commissioner Kuang Li-Chen (鄺麗貞) said. In addition to Green Island and Orchid Island, the county's cultural heritage and festivals are major attractions for Japanese tourists, Kuang said. He also vowed to promote visits to Taitung in other countries and territories in the region, including Hong Kong, Macau and Southeast Asian nations.
■ SCIENCE
FAO okays screening tests
Screening techniques for foot-and-mouth disease that were developed by researchers at a laboratory run by the Council of Agriculture have won the approval of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and have proven to be capable of determining infection within a short time, council officials said yesterday. The techniques, which were developed and refined by the council's Animal Health Research Institute, employ state-of-the-art gene chips to provide accurate and timely screening services, the officials said. Gene chips, which are also known as DNA microarray, are a miniaturized device designed to analyze DNA sequences. They are used in drug development and quarantine screening. The method was certificated by the UK-based Pirbright Laboratory last year as part of the FAO's quality reviews for screening techniques used in some 40 labs worldwide.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift