■NATURE
Small quake rocks Taiwan
An earthquake measuring 5 on Richter scale jolted Taiwan at 10:02pm on Sunday. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties. The temblor, centered 24.7km northeast of Suao (蘇澳), Yilan County, was caused by the movement of the Eurasian Plate against the Philippine Sea Plate, the Central Weather Bureau said.
■SOCIETY
AIT lauds new radio station
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) yesterday congratulated Oh!Zone on its launch of the newest all-English Web radio station in Taiwan. “The Web radio station features programs provided by several leading US universities, including the University of Pennsylvania, University of Delaware and University of Southern California,” an AIT statement said. The new network is scheduled to make its debut tomorrow “with an all-English commercial-free program lineup from an all-star roster of campus radio stations,” the release said, adding that more than 60 disc jockeys would be playing the latest US and international music.
■LITERATURE
Kenzaburo Oe visits Taiwan
Kenzaburo Oe, the Japanese writer who won the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature for creating “an imagined world where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today,” arrived in Taiwan yesterday for his first visit to the country. Oe is visiting Taiwan at the invitation of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy at the Academia Sinica — Taiwan’s most prestigious academic institution. In addition to attending a symposium on his literature scheduled for today and tomorrow, Oe will also give lectures and autograph copies of his books for local readers.
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