■ PANDAS
Pandas reject local bamboo
The two pandas from China are turning up their noses at Taiwanese bamboo and have each lost 3kg, a newspaper reported yesterday. Tuan Tuan (團團), the male, weighed 109kg while Yuan Yuan (圓圓), the female, weighed 111.2kg when they were put on the scales at the Taipei Zoo on Friday, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) said. The Taipei Zoo is offering other types of local bamboo to the pair to find out which type they like, the zoo said. The two pandas arrived in Taiwan on Tuesday, along with 300kg of Chinese bamboo, or a week’s supply. Now the Chinese bamboo is running out. Besides bamboo leaves, the Taipei Zoo is feeding the pandas bamboo shoots, carrots, apples and steamed buns made with bamboo powder, corn, soybean, sugar, salt and calcium.
■ DIPLOMACY
Taiwan donates to Kiribati
Taiwan has recently donated 200 tonnes of rice to Kiribati in a bid to help relieve a food shortage in the Pacific nation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. The rice, which was given to the Kiribati government on Christmas Eve, is intended for distribution to hospitals, clinics and public boarding schools, ministry officials said. The officials quoted Ambassador to Kiribati Chen Shih-liang (陳士良) as saying that the rice had arrived just in time for Christmas and demonstrated the nation’s care and friendship for the people of Kiribati. Taiwanese agricultural missions will continue to promote farming, livestock and aquaculture in Kiribati to help resolve the country’s food shortage, the officials said.
■ AGRICULTURE
COA to revitalize farmland
The nation’s agricultural authority said it planned to revitalize 60,000 hectares of fallow farmland next year to increase food production. Yu Sheng-feng (游勝鋒), deputy director-general of the Council of Agriculture’s (COA) Agriculture and Food Agency, said the plan to revitalize the fallow land had been submitted to the Cabinet for consideration. Noting that Taiwan has 220,000 hectares of farmland lying idle, Yu said his agency hoped to allow food crops to be grown on 60,000 hectares of that land. The plan would offer subsidies of NT$50,000 (US$1,515) per hectare each year for the owner of the farmland to grow crops — higher than the NT$45,000 for owners not to farm their land.
■ CULTURE
Taoyuan holds book expo
The seventh Taoyuan National Book Exhibition will open on New Year’s Eve at Taoyuan County Arena for a six-day run, with 38 of the nation’s major publishing companies operating more than 100 stalls. The Taoyuan County Government’s Cultural Affairs Bureau, the organizer of the event, said many exhibitors will hold drawings for NT$3,600 book vouchers and NT$3,600 value packages. The value of NT$3,600 is a play on the central government’s voucher program, in which shopping vouchers worth NT$3,600 will be issued to all citizens starting Jan. 18 in a bid to stimulate the economy. Ten renowned writers and three experts in different fields will be invited to speak on various subjects during the exhibition. The county government will provide free shuttle bus services from the Taoyuan rail station to the exhibition venue. The weekend bus runs begin at 9:30am and the weekday schedule starts at 12:30pm, with service every 20 minutes.
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
HOSPITALITY HIT: Hotels in Hualien have an occupancy rate of 10 percent, down from 30 percent before the earthquake, a Tourism Administration official said The Executive Yuan yesterday unveiled a stimulus package of vouchers and subsidies to revive tourism in Hualien County following a quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. The tremor on April 3, which killed at least 17 people and left two others missing, caused the county an estimated NT$3 billion (US$92.7 million) in damages. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is to issue vouchers worth NT$200 at the price of NT$100 for purchases at the Dongdamen Night Market (東大門夜市) in Hualien City to boost spending, a ministry official told a news conference after a Cabinet meeting in Taipei. The ministry plans to issue 18,400