The Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) approved on Monday a NT$2.31 billion (US$7.27 million) budget for the 2009 to 2012 period to improve the quality of the nation’s funeral service industry.
Under the plan, proposed by the Ministry of the Interior (MOI), NT$1.7 billion would be allocated to the central government and NT$610 million in subsidies sent to local governments to carry out the measure, which is focused primarily on redesigning and renovating existing cemeteries.
Beginning in January, each township will be able to apply for funding for one renovation project. Approved projects would receive subsidies of as much as NT$10 million.
The nation’s 319 townships count 2,000 public cemeteries covering 80 million square meters, but planning is inefficient and the designs are poor. Overhauling their haphazard setup was a top priority.
The government said that by renovating some of the cemeteries and encouraging higher cremation rates, 80,000 square meters of land could be freed for other uses.
The budget also includes provisions for building new funeral parlors and cremation sites every year, with each project eligible to receive subsidies of as much as NT$50 million.
The plan also calls for a NT$3 million subsidy for the purchase of crematorium and air-pollution control equipment by local governments.
Meanwhile, the council also approved an NT$8 billion plan to improve and expand the country’s sidewalks and bikeways over the next four years, starting next year.
The announcement came as a growing number of residents ride bicycles to work or for fun amid high fuel prices and efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Under the proposal, made by the MOI, the number of sidewalks around the country that can be described as “friendly” would be raised from 11.95 percent to 40 percent of total sidewalks, the council said in a statement.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
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