DIPLOMACY
Taiwan to hold APEC talks
Taiwan will hold bilateral talks with other APEC members during the bloc’s annual meeting being held in Bali, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. However, Taiwan will not release the details of the talks until after the meetings, ministry officials said. The APEC leaders’ week, which opened on Tuesday on the Indonesian resort island, includes a ministerial meeting scheduled for today and tomorrow, an economic leaders’ meeting on Monday and Tuesday next week, and other events. Former vice president Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) will represent President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) at the summit, where he is expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Siew will also take the opportunity to show Taiwan’s determination to participate in regional economic integration, the ministry said.
SOCIETY
Retirees support dependents
Two-thirds of Taiwanese retirees responding to a global survey said they are still supporting dependents. HSBC Holding, a multinational bank, conducted the survey on global retirement trends of 16,000 people across 15 countries between July last year and July this year. It was released on Sept. 18. In Taiwan, 66 percent of respondents said they were still taking care of dependents despite being retired. “It seems that one consequence of the aging population in particular is that funding elderly parents while in retirement will remain commonplace,” the report said, noting that 25 percent of Taiwanese retirees said they were actively supporting parents and another 31 percent intended to do so. Despite that financial burden, 69 percent of respondents plan to leave their assets to family members. Those assets are valued at nearly NT$5.7 million per person (US$190,000), the third highest in Asia and Oceania behind Australia and Singapore, the report said.
HEALTH
Boy receives new liver
Surgeons completed a liver transplant for a seven-month-old boy from Guatemala, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital said on Wednesday. The team, led by the hospital’s superintendent, Chen Chao-long (陳肇隆), began the 10-hour operation on Sandiago Haider on Tuesday, transplanting a section of liver donated by his mother. The boy required the transplant because he was born with biliary atresia, a bile duct defect. Chen said the operation was difficult because the smallest piece of liver taken from the mother weighed 360g while the boy needed a piece of only around 50g. Therefore, Chen and his team decided during the surgery to reduce the donor liver to 200g to minimize possible complications.
HEALTH
Many miss mammograms
Fewer than one-third of Taiwanese women undergo breast cancer screenings every two years leaving thousands at risk in a country where one in every 176 middle-aged women screened is diagnosed with the disease. Bureau of Health Promotion (BHP) data from last year showed that just 32.5 percent of women aged 45-69 underwent regular mammograms. Based on the diagnosis rate, that means that as many as 14,000 women who skipped breast exams could have already developed breast cancer, the bureau said yesterday in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness month. BHP deputy director Kung Hsien-lan (孔憲蘭) said that many women cite busy schedules or otherwise good health as excuses for not having regular check ups. She urged women to take advantage of potentially life-saving subsidized mammograms.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai
Four China Coast Guard ships briefly sailed through prohibited waters near Kinmen County, Taipei said, urging Beijing to stop actions that endanger navigation safety. The Chinese ships entered waters south of Kinmen, 5km from the Chinese city of Xiamen, at about 3:30pm on Monday, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement later the same day. The ships “sailed out of our prohibited and restricted waters” about an hour later, the agency said, urging Beijing to immediately stop “behavior that endangers navigation safety.” Ministry of National Defense spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) yesterday told reporters that Taiwan would boost support to the Coast Guard