■DIPLOMACY
AIT to settle name mixup
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday that the US State Department would assign a Bureau of Consular Affairs specialist to ensure Taiwan’s official designation appears on the online application for permanent US residency. Department of North American Affairs Deputy-head Michael Hsu (徐佩勇) said a Taiwanese notified the ministry on Oct. 6 in an e-mail to Foreign Minister Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) that Taiwan was listed as “China-Taiwan” in the birthplace and mailing address pull-down menus. Hsu said the ministry immediately ordered Jason Yuan (袁健生), Taiwan’s representative to the US, to send a letter on the issue to Barbara Schrage, managing director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). The AIT has promised to promptly settle the problem with US government agencies, he said.
■DIPLOMACY
Obama advisers plan visit
A delegation of US president-elect Barack Obama’s top Asia policy advisers — also academics at the prominent US think tank the Brookings Institute — are scheduled to visit at the end of this month, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The planned visit signifies the close relations between Taipei and the Obama team, the ministry said. The delegation will be co-headed by former American Institute in Taiwan Chairman Richard Bush and Brookings president Strobe Talbott, who served as the deputy secretary of state under former US president Bill Clinton. Talbott is tipped to be named a key player in the State Department in the Obama administration.
■RESCUE
Ocean search continues
Rescuers continued their search yesterday for 19 seamen reported missing after their fishing boat overturned and sank in shark-infested waters off Taiwan’s southern coast, officials said. “Hopes of finding the missing people is fading but we will not give up,” a transport ministry official said. “We’ve expanded the search area,” he said, adding that two helicopters and eight coastguard and naval vessels had been sent to the area where the trawler sank on Sunday after sending out a distress signal around 10pm. The crew included sailors from Taiwan, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. A panic-stricken survivor told rescuers that he had witnessed one of the crew members being attacked by sharks and washed away by high waves whipped up by strong winds. The coastguard, navy and police on Monday rescued nine of the 28-strong crew after the Fu Chi Hsiang No. 767, a 993-tonne fishing boat based in Kaohsiung City, sank late on Sunday. The cause of the accident was not immediately clear.
■HEALTH
DOH to ban toxic material
Cosmetics containing the toxic chemical di-n-octyl phthalate will be banned starting next May, the Department of Health (DOH) announced yesterday. After that date, manufacturers, importers, exhibitors and sellers of such products could face penalties of up to one year imprisonment and fines of up to NT$150,000 (US$4,555), the DOH said. Chiu Pin-chi (邱品齊), head of the dermatology department at National Taiwan University Hospital’s Yunlin Branch, said that di-n-octyl phthalate is mainly used as a plasticizer and is also commonly used as a fixative in personal care products such as nail polish, perfume, hair gel and shower gel. Exposure to the chemical can disrupt the endocrine system and lead to feminization, Chiu said. Female fetuses exposed to the chemical may later experience precocious puberty, while males may later suffer from reproductive disorders.
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
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:
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