■FISHING
No approval required
The fishing industry agreement Taiwan and China seek to sign next month does not need to be reviewed by the legislature because it does not involve legal revision of the cross-strait statute, Mainland Affairs Council Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) said yesterday. Because President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has pledged not to further open the local market to Chinese workers, Lai said the agreement did not have anything to do with allowing more Chinese workers to enter Taiwan. Chinese fishermen have been allowed to work on deep-sea fishing boats since 1993 and to stay at temporary shelters on land since 2004. There are now about 10,000 Chinese fishermen working on deep-sea fishing boats and between 4,500 and 5,000 on inshore fishing boats. The number of fishermen from other foreign countries is about 4,700. While the next round of cross-strait high-level talks are set to take place in Taichung City next month, the two sides will address four issues: fishing industry cooperation, quality checks of agricultural products, cross-strait cooperation in inspection and certification and avoiding double taxation.
■EDUCATION
Hakka exam to pay off
In an effort to promote the Hakka language, the Council for Hakka Affairs (CHA) said that the government would offer grants for junior high school and elementary students who pass a Hakka examination. The results of this year’s exam, scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, will be announced on Jan. 15 and those who pass the exam will be eligible for the grants, Minister of Hakka Affairs Huang Yu-cheng (黃玉振) said. Only elementary and junior high school students are eligible for the awards, Huang said. Anyone passing the elementary level test will receive NT$1,000, while NT$5,000 and NT$10,000 will be given to those who pass the intermediate and upper-intermediate level tests respectively.
■DIPLOMACY
New trade offices planned
Taiwan plans to set up trade offices in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, which may signal a breakthrough in the country’s bid to participate in ASEAN, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Justin Chou (周守訓) said yesterday. At least one of the offices will be established by the end of the year, said Chou, who serves as a convener of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign and National Defense Committee. Chou said the country had difficulty setting up trade offices in these three countries in the past because of China’s obstruction. However, he said that because cross-strait relations have improved significantly over the past year, ASEAN members are now more willing to develop economic and trade relations. This shows that it is not impossible for the country to be included in ASEAN in the future, he said.
■AGRICULTURE
COA to buy oranges
The Council of Agriculture (COA) will purchase oranges from farmers for domestic use and expand exports to China as part of efforts to stabilize prices in anticipation of an oversupply in the December and January harvest season, officials said yesterday. Orange production is estimated to total 210,000 tonnes this year, said Hsu Han-ching (許漢卿), chief secretary of the COA’s Agriculture and Food Agency. The council will purchase 20,000 tonnes of the fruit, half of which will be used to make juice for schoolchildren, while the other half will be put into cold storage, he said. Meanwhile, the country will export 1,870 tonnes of oranges to China by the end of the year, up from 1,250 tonnes last year.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
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