■TOURISM
Pandemic rocks industry
The nation’s travel agencies said they have been left reeling after the WHO’s declaration of a global pandemic of the A(H1N1) influenza virus caused many Taiwanese to avoid foreign travel. The latest Tourism Bureau statistics showed that only a few first-stop international destinations such as South Korea, Britain, Palau and Australia, enjoyed growth in the number of travelers from Taiwan last month — thanks to the incentives that included favorable exchange rates, visa free privileges and convenient flight services. The number of travelers to Japan, which attracts more than 1 million Taiwanese annually, had only 80,382 Taiwanese visitors last month, marking a drop of 35.41 percent from the same month last year, the statistics showed. As for Thailand, visitors from Taiwan fell by 36.4 percent last month compared with the same month last year, while the number of Taiwanese travelers to the US fell by 33.63 percent. The statistics also show the overall number of travelers who departed Taiwan last month dropped 13.28 percent.
■CRIME
Addict kills father: police
A female drug addict was arrested on Friday for allegedly stabbing her septuagenarian father to death after he refused to give her money, the Taipei Zhongshan police precinct said yesterday. The 46-year-old woman, surnamed Tien, had a long history of drug abuse. Her 77-year-old father used to give her a living allowance but police said he had recently stopped. On Thursday, the father told his family he was going to visit the daughter but did not return. He was later found dead lying in a pool of his own blood at the apartment where his daughter was living. Police said that the suspect asked for NT$5,000, but the father was only willing to give her NT$300. The suspect then stabbed her father 22 times, police said, adding that she was arrested near Taipei’s Ximending area and had confessed to the crime.
■HEALTH
Cycling to fight cancer
A group of cyclists completed a 13-day bicycle trip around Taiwan yesterday that was aimed at raising public awareness of particular types of cancer that affect females and to educate women about the importance of regular health checks in the prevention and control of breast cancer. The group, organized by the Taiwan Breast Cancer Alliance, comprised breast cancer sufferers and members of their families. The group set off on the 1,000km tour from Taipei County on June 8. Huang Pu-hsin (黃菩欣), a representative for the group, said their next step would be to cycle through every township in Taiwan within three years to teach residents how to conduct self-examinations and face the disease. Citing statistics released by the Department of Health in 2006, Huang said 6,895 people were diagnosed with breast cancer that year, with 1,439 people dying of the disease.
■EARTHQUAKES
Temblor shakes up east
A 5.5-magnitude quake shook the eastern coast of Taiwan yesterday, the Central Weather Bureau said. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. The undersea tremor hit at 11:44am, 77km southeast of Ilan County at a depth of 11km, the bureau said. Taiwan, which lies near the junction of two tectonic plates, is regularly shaken by earthquakes.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift