■ CRIME
Death in Mauritania
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still trying to confirm the country of origin of a fishing boat that reportedly contained two frozen corpses, ministry spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) said yesterday in response to a wire report that the bodies were found on a Taiwanese vessel while docked at a Mauritius harbor. An Agence France-Presse report from Port Louis, Mauritius, said the bodies were discovered on a Taiwanese fishing boat on Monday during a raid. Mauritanian authorities have arrested the captain and three crew members of the Jiu Yin vessel for questioning. “We have already contacted our representative office in South Africa to determine whether it is a Taiwanese boat. If so, we will provide immediate assistance to help the men with the case,” Chen said. Tests are still under way to determine the cause of death.
■ ADMINISTRATION
Fee cancelations extended
The Cabinet said yesterday it would extend a freeze on all administrative and user fees charged by its agencies until the end of the year, as part of government efforts to control inflation. The freeze covers more than 3,000 types of fees, including fuel surcharges, passport and visa fees and license fees. A similar measure, which expired at the end of last month, was announced in March by then premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄). Government statistics showed that the consumer price index spiked 3.71 percent year-on-year in May and 3.66 percent year-on-year for the first five months of this year, driven mainly by hikes in fuel and food prices. To curb inflation, the central bank raised its key interest rates by 0.125 percentage points last week, pushing the discount rate up to 3.625 percent, the rate on accommodations with collateral to 4 percent and the rate on accommodations without collateral to 5.875 percent.
■ CULTURE
Council picks performers
The Council for Cultural Affairs has selected 25 domestic performing arts groups for a grassroots tour around the country starting on July 20, the council said in a news release yesterday. The 25 troupes, covering the fields of music, dance, contemporary drama and traditional Chinese opera, were selected from 144 groups that had applied to participate in the annual tour. The council has sponsored the “Performing Arts Grassroots Tour” around the country since 1997 to stage free performances to encourage public participation in the arts and promote cultural appreciation. The council has presented 1,300 performances by local art groups in 319 townships nationwide under its annual program over the past 11 years.
■ POLITICS
DPP to hold fundraiser
The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Kaohsiung city chapter will hold a fundraising dinner next Sunday, with the aim of raising NT$6 million (US$196,600). Chen Cheng-wen (陳政聞), who assumed directorship of the chapter last Saturday, said the NT$10,000-a-plate fundraising dinner is part of party’s plan to strengthen its weak financial position after losing power to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) this year. Chen said he would tap party officials, mayor, legislators and city councilors to assist in the fundraising. He said he had mapped out a plan for building a solid grassroots organization, saying the party would install a chief in each district and a commissioner in each borough, the smallest administrative district in the city.
■ EVENTS
AIT to hold English camp
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) has organized for Taiwanese youth aged eight to 15 to participate in an English Summer Camp on Saturday, an event to be held in celebration of the US’ Independence Day tomorrow. “The event aims to increase awareness of American society, culture and values,” the AIT said in a press release. “It will include programs focused on American baseball, American culture and holidays,” as well as stories about American Indians. The activity, co-sponsored by Providence University’s Foreign Language Center and Chinese Professional Baseball League, will be held at the Taichung American Corner for Aboriginal high school students and at Providence University for elementary school students, the press release said.
■ POLITICS
DPP leaders to meet Ma
All heads of cities and counties in southern Taiwan under Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) governance will take part in a meeting with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) today, Tainan County Commissioner Su Huan-chih (蘇煥智) said. Su said a consensus was reached late on Tuesday among heads of local governments who are DPP members to proceed to Taipei today to talk with the new president over tea. The southern cities and counties with DPP local chiefs include Yunlin County, Chiayi County, Tainan City, Tainan County, Kaohsiung City, Kaohsiung County and Pingtung County. The Presidential Office has extended invitations to all local chiefs of the country’s 25 cities and counties recently to have talks with Ma over tea today, but DPP mayors and county commissioners in southern Taiwan remained undecided until Tuesday on whether to attend the meeting.
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: