COURTS
Ex-TRA worker vindicated
The Taipei High Administrative Court on Monday ruled in favor of the family of an employee of the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) who was accused of spying for China in 1949, offering a certificate declaring the innocence of the deceased man. Chang Yu-lan (張玉蘭), former deputy head at Pingtung Station, was accused of spying for China and detained for 254 days in 1949, during which time he was tortured to extract a confession. He was later released over a lack of evidence. A district court ruled in 2001 that Chang should receive NT$1.27 million (US$41,270) in compensation for being wrongly detained. After Chang died in 2008, his children filed a suit with the administrative court because a reconciliation foundation set up by the government in 1998 refused to bestow a certificate of innocence to Chang.
DIPLOMACY
US official to visit
A US Department of State official is scheduled to arrive today for a three-day visit to discuss trade and investment issues, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said yesterday. The visit is the first to the nation for Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs Kurt Tong since he assumed the post in July, the AIT said in a statement. He is to deliver a keynote speech tomorrow at a private equity forum organized by the Asian Venture Capital Journal in Taipei and then participate in a panel discussion on innovation at an event organized by the AIT and the National Development Council, the statement said. Tong is scheduled to meet with political, business and academic leaders to discuss trade, investment and commercial matters. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tong’s visit will “help both countries continue to bolster bilateral trade relations.”
SOCIETY
Foreign parent numbers up
One in every nine students in Taoyuan County’s elementary and junior-high schools has a foreign-born parent, a sharp rise from 2.1 percent recorded 10 years ago, the latest figures from the county government show. The number of students under 15 years of age from new immigrant families has grown significantly over the past decade, from 5,488 in 2004 to 23,877 at the end of last year, the county government said. The trend is particularly noticeable since the overall number of elementary-school and junior-high students dropped from 266,050 to 219,051 over the 10-year period, it said. About 86 percent of the foreign-born parents are from China (37.1 percent), Vietnam (30.6 percent) and Indonesia (18.4 percent), statistics show. More than half of the children from such families attend school in Jhongli (中壢, 18.6 percent), while the others go the school in Taoyuan (15.1 percent), Pingjhen (平鎮, 10.7 percent) and Yangmei (楊梅, 9.2 percent), the county government said.
SOCIETY
Keelung opens LGBT center
A culture center devoted to a healthy lifestyle for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people was launched in Keelung on Monday, becoming the first support center for the community in the city. Established by a student group at National Taiwan Ocean University together with the Keelung Health Bureau, the center is on the fifth floor of a building next to Chang Gung Memorial Hospital’s Keelung branch. The center is to sponsor health screening and awareness campaigns, the student group said. The Health Bureau said that it plans to promote its HIV prevention campaign at the center.
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
HOSPITALITY HIT: Hotels in Hualien have an occupancy rate of 10 percent, down from 30 percent before the earthquake, a Tourism Administration official said The Executive Yuan yesterday unveiled a stimulus package of vouchers and subsidies to revive tourism in Hualien County following a quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. The tremor on April 3, which killed at least 17 people and left two others missing, caused the county an estimated NT$3 billion (US$92.7 million) in damages. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is to issue vouchers worth NT$200 at the price of NT$100 for purchases at the Dongdamen Night Market (東大門夜市) in Hualien City to boost spending, a ministry official told a news conference after a Cabinet meeting in Taipei. The ministry plans to issue 18,400