DIPLOMACY
New AIT director named
US diplomat Christopher Marut will take over as director of the Taipei Office of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), which represents US interests in Taiwan, diplomatic sources said on Thursday. Marut will succeed William Stanton, who completes his three-year tenure in August, the sources said, adding that the arrangement has been approved by the government of Taiwan and will be officially announced by the US Department of State next week. Marut is currently director of the Office of Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Island Affairs under the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He was director of the bureau’s Office of Regional and Security Policy before being assigned in 2007 to Hong Kong, where he served as deputy consul-general until 2009 and as acting consul-general from August 2009 to March 2010.
TRAVEL
New flights to Seoul to start
Direct flights between Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) and Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport will be launched on Monday. Two Seoul-based discount carriers, T’way Airlines and Eastar Jet, and Taiwan’s two major airlines, China Airlines and Eva Airways, will offer 14 round-trip flights a week, seven for the carriers of each country, said Lu Ze-yen (呂枝彥), general manager of Sepung International Service, a Seoul-based travel agency. China Airlines will launch the first flight from Taipei to Gimpo International, while the first Seoul-Taipei flight will be offered by T’way Airlines, Lu said. The new routes are expected to cut travel time because of the proximity of the airports to the cities they serve. Gimpo International is about 35km closer to downtown Seoul than Incheon International Airport, while Taipei airport is within city limits.
SOCIETY
Taipower sorry for project
State-owned Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) president Lee Han-shen (李漢申) apologized in person to villagers in Hualien County yesterday for conducting a geological exploration project not far from their homes without notifying them or local authorities. Amid demonstrations by local residents who voiced anger over the project, Lee watched as Taipower workers sealed wells on the site to officially terminate the project. Lee also signed an agreement to declare his company’s respect for the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act (原住民族基本法) and the rights of Aborigines who live in the region. The residents then erected a commemorative stele on the capped wells. Lawmakers earlier this month revealed that Taipower was undertaking the project near Sioulin Township (秀林), and some people alleged it was being done to pave the way for a nuclear waste storage facility.
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
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: