■ LABOR
Free clinic for workers
The Taipei City Department of Labor will organize a free one-day clinic today to provide health checks and medical consultancy services to foreign workers. The clinic will be held from 1:30pm to 5pm today at the Taipei Railway Station, in a joint effort between the city government and the Tzu Chi International Medical Association (TIMA). The city department and the non-profit organization will recruit local physicians who speak the languages of Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam to volunteer at the clinic, a statement issued by the department said. The services provided will include normal health checks and basic medical treatment for those suffering from depression, eye, skin and teeth problems, and gynecological and internal diseases. Council of Labor Affairs statistics show that as of August, there were more than 373,336 foreign laborers in Taiwan, 125,330 of whom were from Indonesia, 85,639 from the Philippines, 82,643 from Thailand and 79,703 from Vietnam.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Rare crab spotted
A species of rare land crab has been spotted in Kenting National Park, marking only the third time in history that this type of species has been observed by scientists, sources at the park administration said on Friday. The park’s biologists said that the sesarmid crab, named labuanium trapezoideum, was first spotted on Andaman Island, Indonesia, in 1837 and biologists did not find another such crab until 166 years later. In 2003, a group of biologists found several labuanium trapezoideum crabs in Taitung County and made detailed records of their biological and behavioral characteristics, which was later published in the science journal Crustaceana. Since 2003, however, no other habitats of labuanium trapezoideum crabs had been found in Taiwan. Last month, an amateur ecologist at the park reported seeing and photographed a “strange” crab, which was later identified as a labuanium trapezoideum crab. Park biologists said the finding indicates not only that the species still exists, but that there may be a new habitat inside the national park.
■ EDUCATION
Students admitted in France
Ten Taiwanese senior high school students have recently gained admission to the preparatory school of France’s prestigious Grandes Ecoles. The 10 gained admission after passing an examination sponsored by the French Ministry of Education to select outstanding Taiwanese high school students for studies at the preparatory school. They will be able to attend the two-year “Classes Preparatoires aux Grandes Ecoles” beginning early next year, a Ministry of Education (MOE) official said. The French government will fund the two-year tuition for the 10 while the MOE will provide them with round-trip plane tickets.
■ IMMIGRATION
Foreign marriage rate drops
Statistics compiled by the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) show that the cross-border marriage rate has significantly declined in the past four years, a result of a stricter immigration interview system implemented by the National Immigration Agency (NIA). The cross-border marriage rate had climbed from 15.69 percent in 1998 to 31.86 percent by 2003, and thereafter declined to 18.29 percent last year, when 24,700 Taiwanese married foreign spouses, of which 14,721 were from China. The NIA began to conduct immigration interviews for Chinese spouses to prevent them from using marriage as a ruse to gain entry to Taiwan.
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: