ARTS
Teen to perform with NSO
A 16-year-old local violinist, Tseng Yu-chien (曾宇謙), will perform with the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) in two concerts at the National Concert Hall in Taipei tomorrow and on Saturday. Tseng is a student of the Curtis Institute of Music in the US, where he studies under musician Ida Kavafian. The young violinist was the winner of the 10th Pablo Sarasate International Violin Competition last year and took third prize in the junior section of the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition in 2006. He also played a major role in a locally produced movie in August. Tseng yesterday said he was very excited about the two concerts because he would be performing under the baton of NSO resident maestro Lu Shao-chia (呂紹嘉) for the first time.
AVIATION
Nation’s accident rate falling
Taiwan’s air accident rate has been falling in recent years and if the trend continues, will drop to the global average level within three years, an aviation safety official said on Tuesday. Chang Yu-hern (張有恆), chairman of the Council for Aviation Safety, said there were four aviation accidents in Taiwan this year as the country’s 10-year record continues to fall. From 2000 to last year, Taiwan registered 1.82 air accidents per million take-offs, higher than the world average of 1.02, he said. “If the current rate can be maintained, by 2013, our record will have dropped to the world average level of 0.61,” he added. Council figures show that prior to 2008, Taiwan’s 10-year accident record was above two per million takeoffs. The decade of 1993 to 2002 saw the highest record of 3.52, followed by 2.82 for 1994 to 2003, 2.69 for 1998 to 2007 and 2.26 for 1999 to 2008. By 2001 to this year, the record had fallen to the same as 2000 to last year, according to the council.
CULTURE
Influential work named
The non-fiction work Seven Days in Heaven (父後七日) has been selected as one of the 10 most influential books in Taiwan this year by Kingstone Bookstore. The book, which in its manuscript form won first prize in the Lin Rung San Literary Awards in 2006, features a Taiwanese funeral ceremony, through which the author, Essay Liu (劉梓潔), tells how a -collectivist-dominated society can strongly bind an individual, Kingstone commented. Liu has also revised her book into a screenplay to show her experience of death and local funeral rites on the big screen. The film, which bears the same title as the book, made its debut in Taiwan in August and won this year’s Golden Horse Film Award last month for best screenplay adaptation.
ENVIRONMENT
Low-carbon plan ready: EPA
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday that it has come up with a national plan to create a low-carbon environment to fight global warming. The plan includes using clean energy, building a low-carbon economy and designing eco-friendly homes, the EPA said. Next year, every municipality will have two model green communities and the number of such communities will be increased gradually, said Lu Hung-kuang (呂鴻光), executive secretary of the eco-community project. The EPA proposes expanding the low-carbon plan throughout the entire country in three stages between next year and 2020, he said. Development of a low-carbon environment involves changes in areas such as energy conservation, architecture, transportation and environmental protection, which all form a challenging undertaking, Lu said. Taiwan has set a goal of reducing its carbon emissions to 2005 levels by 2020 and to 2000 levels by 2025.
DEFENSE
Volunteer duty set for 2015
Taiwan will introduce an all-volunteer military system in 2015, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said yesterday. To pave the way for the new system, the ministry will begin a policy assessment process on Saturday that will be completed by the end of 2014, said Chao Ke-ta (趙克達), head of the Department of Manpower, during a hearing held by the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee. Asked whether a planned exchange of visits between China’s People’s Liberation Army and US military officials next month will affect US arms sales to Taiwan, Deputy Minister of National Defense Andrew Yang (楊念祖) said the ministry is “cautiously optimistic” about the sales and believes they will not be affected. According to Yang, high-ranking US officials have on many occasions told Beijing that the issue of arms sales to Taiwan does not fall within the scope of US-China exchanges. Washington will consider whether to sell certain weapons to Taiwan based on the defense needs of Taiwan and the West Pacific, Yang said.
TRANSPORTATION
MRT ridership passes 500m
The annual ridership of the Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system was expected to top 500 million passengers yesterday, marking a new chapter in Taiwan’s MRT services since the system’s inception in 1996, the Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said. As of Monday, the Taipei MRT system posted a ridership total of 498 million passengers this year, according to the TRTC, operator of the MRT. Expanding from one route in March 1996, the Taipei MRT system now encompasses 10 routes connecting many districts in the greater Taipei area, with 93 stations and a service length exceeding 100km.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods