Minister of National Defense Yen Ming (嚴明) is scheduled to inspect the disputed Itu Aba (Taiping Island, 太平島) tomorrow, alongside military officials and members of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee.
Ministry officials said Yen’s top priority is assessing the progress of military installation construction on the island in the South China Sea, including the expansion of port facilities to accommodate armed naval vessels of up to 3,000 tonnes, and the reinforcement of an airstrip for military transport aircraft.
The NT$3.3 billion (US$108.28 million) project began this spring and is scheduled to conclude by the end of next year.
Ministry officials said the military plans to station one of the nation’s new 3,000-tonne coast guard cutters, either the CG-128 Yilan or the CG-129 Kaohsiung, at Itu Aba to patrol the surrounding marine areas.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chiu Chih-wei (邱志偉), who is also chairman of the legislative committee, said that in addition to overseeing progress on construction, Yen is to observe exercises designed to test the operation of artillery and troop readiness.
At a committee meeting last week, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) said the port expansion was on schedule, with about 30 percent completed at the end of September, and should be on target to finish on time.
“Chigua Reef [Johnson South Reef, 赤瓜礁] is very close to Taiping Island, only 70km away to the south. We know that China has been busy in building up an artificial island and enhancing its military presence in the area,” Lin said. “No matter whether China intends to build facilities for radar stations, naval piers or airstrips, it would threaten our military defense situation on Taiping Island.”
Another major military buildup by China in recent years is at the Fiery Cross Reef, also known as Yongshu Reef (永暑礁), which lies about 150km southwest of Itu Aba.
Taiping Island, controlled by Taiwan, is the largest of the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) in the disputed South China Sea, where claimants include Vietnam, China and the Philippines.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the