DEFENSE
Air force capability boosted
The completion of a project to upgrade Taiwan’s E-2K early-warning aircraft means that the air force now has enhanced search and surveillance capability, Air Force Commanding General Yen Ming (嚴明) said yesterday. Under the “Hawkeye No. 3” upgrade project, the changes focused on the planes’ radar and engines, Yen said in a press statement. The upgrade will also reduce maintenance costs and the number of working hours needed to repair the aircraft, he said. In addition, four-bladed propellers on the planes were replaced with eight-bladed ones. The US agreed in 2008 to upgrade Taiwan’s four E-2T airborne early-warning aircraft to the E-2K model. The four aircraft were sent to the US in two separate batches in 2010 and 2011 respectively. The first two were returned in 2011 and the others on March 8, the air force said.
TRAVEL
Alert raised for Myanmar
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has upgraded its travel alert from “yellow” to “orange” for a city in central Myanmar after recent religious clashes. The ministry urged Taiwanese to avoid unnecessary travel to Meiktila City and to exercise extreme caution if they have to go there. The “orange” alert is the second-highest level in the ministry’s four-color-coded travel advisory system. The clashes that erupted on Wednesday last week in Meiktila between Buddhists and Muslims have resulted in 32 deaths and damage to hundreds of houses and have left tens of thousands homeless. Burmese authorities declared a state of emergency the following day so the military could help restore order.
CRIME
Drifting vessel found
The coast guard on Wednesday said it found a drifting vessel with 43 Vietnamese stowaways on board off Sinfong Township (新豐), Hsinchu County. A spokesman said the coast guard received a tip-off from local fishermen on Tuesday afternoon that a Chinese-registered ship was drifting about 8 nautical miles (14.8km) off Hsinchu. When the officers arrived at the scene, they found 43 Vietnamese crammed into a small space, looking faint. The spokesman said the boat people they had been abandoned on Sunday, shortly after departing from southeastern China, with little clean water, food or fuel on board. They told investigators that they had paid between 3,000 and 4,000 yuan (US$480 to US$640) each to be transported from China to Taiwan aboard on old fishing boat, but the boat’s owner abandoned them.
TRAVEL
Kaohsiung-Tokyo flights eyed
China Airlines (CAL) is considering increasing passenger and cargo flights between Greater Kaohsiung and Tokyo after the Japanese government announced earlier this week that it was lifting restrictions on flights from Taiwan, chairman Sun Huang-hsiang (孫洪祥) said. The airline was not thinking about adding capacity between Taipei and Tokyo because it already had enough scheduled flights to meet demand, but was studying whether service between Greater Kaohsiung and the Japanese capital could be expanded, he said. The airline currently has two Greater Kaohsiung-Tokyo flights a week. Sun said the load factor on the airline’s flights between Taiwan and Japan range from 70 percent to 75 percent and was growing at a stable rate. Flights out of Taipei International Airport (Songshan) are more fully booked than those leaving Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, which are more vulnerable to high and low tourism seasons, he said.
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