■ POLITICS
Legislature to review budget
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) vowed yesterday that the legislature would carry out its gate-keeping duty when reviewing the government’s special budget request of NT$150.6 billion (US$4.4 billion). Wang told reporters that he believed lawmakers would strictly review the Cabinet’s budget proposal instead of cutting it a great deal of slack, adding the legislature would also communicate with the Cabinet about any unreasonable budget requests. Wang made the remarks after lawmakers across party lines raised questions about details of the budget request. The budget request to increase investment in public construction projects was submitted to the legislature on Monday. The Procedure Committee on Tuesday agreed to prioritize the proposal in tomorrow’s plenary session — the first plenary meeting of the spring legislative session. Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) is expected to brief the legislature tomorrow on administrative achievements in the second half of last year and take questions concerning the special budget request on Tuesday.
■ DIPLOMACY
Taiwan vows to help Tuvalu
The government promised yesterday to help residents of Tuvalu before the island chain is wiped off the map under a rising South Pacific. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) told visiting Tuvalu Prime Minister Apisai Ielemia that his government wanted to work more closely with the archipelago where the highest point is just 5m above sea level. Tuvalu, covering 26km2 over nine coral reefs, faces inundation as global warming pushes up sea levels. Leaders in the archipelago have sought an eventual haven for their 12,000 citizens as the sea level rises. “We’re an ally, so we will exhaust all options to save it,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) said. “I think we’ll be working as hard as possible to help Tuvalu’s citizens.”
■ TOURISM
Cherry blossoms in bloom
The Taipei City Government said visitors to this year’s Yangmingshan National Park flower festival, which opens tomorrow and lasts until March 22, will be treated to spectacular cherry blossoms. Officials from the city’s Parks and Street Lights Office said that cherry trees on Yangmingshan are in full bloom and the red of their blossoms is the richest in years thanks to the big gap in temperatures from day to night. Details on the festival and traffic information are available in Chinese at the Web site http://2009yms.com.tw/page0.html.
■ RESEARCH
History resources go online
Researchers interested in history and philology can now register with the Academia Sinica’s online database to enjoy free access to the 16 digital archives compiled by Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology (IHP). To provide high quality and accessible research materials to sinologists, the IHP began digitizing its collection of antique books, documents and artifacts in the mid-1980s, Academia Sinica said. The collection has been visited about 5,000 times a day by affiliated researchers alone. The collections — including Scripta Sinica, the Database of Bronze Rubbings, the Database of Oracle Rubbings, Grand Secretariat Archives and Ming and Qing Dynasty Biographical information — will now be open to everyone, Academia Sinica said. To apply for online access, log onto http://applyonline.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/. An explanatory meeting will be held at the IHP tomorrow from 9am to 3:30pm.
■AGRICULTURE
Tainan goes organic
Tainan County began work on a special zone for organic farming yesterday, hoping to develop it into a model for similar zones around the country and a tourist attraction. Completion of the special organic zone is scheduled for August and more than 20 farmers have already begun cultivating rice, raspberries, pomelos, pumpkins, eggplants and sweet potatoes in the compound, county officials said. The special organic farm is located on a 40-hectare plot of land that the county government leased from the state-run Taiwan Sugar Co, county officials said. Under the county’s program, the land is being rented to farmers at NT$50,000 per hectare per year, the officials said. A 1,000m² sales and exhibition center will also be opened to sell produce from the zone.
■SPORTS
Taiwanese scoop 30 medals
Taiwan won a total of 30 medals — six golds, 12 silvers and 12 bronzes — in the week-long 2009 Special Olympics World Winter Games that concluded recently in the US. The 36 young athletes with intellectual disabilities that represented Taiwan won medals in all four events in which they participated — speed skating, figure skating, snowshoeing and floor hockey, the Sports Affairs Council (SAC) said. US Vice President Joe Biden attended the Idaho games and presented awards to the Taiwanese medalist in the figure skating event the council said. A photograph of the presentation made the front page of the biggest local newspaper, the Boise Statesman, that day, the SAC said. Taiwan won 20 gold medals, 13 silvers and 10 bronzes in the 2005 Special Olympics in the Japanese city of Nagano, the SAC said.
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