DIPLOMACY
Ministry warns fishermen
With the arrival of the bluefin tuna season, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday urged local fishermen to avoid the Philippines’ territorial waters. Although Taiwan and the Philippines have signed an agreement on joint law enforcement in their overlapping exclusive economic zones, several differences are unresolved, MOFA Department of International Cooperation and Economic Affairs Deputy Director-General Kay Lin (林恩真) said. Taiwanese fishermen should be very cautious when operating in waters between 12 and 24 nautical miles (22km and 44km) off the Philippine coast, Lin said. He said Taiwanese fishing boats should report their positions regularly and must not enter the 12 nautical mile zone.
CRIME
Chinese asylum seeker held
A man from Zhejiang Province landed on Kinmen Island (金門) in a rubber boat early yesterday, saying that he came seeking freedom. The coast guard detected and monitored the boat being rowed toward Shuangkou Beach in Leiyu Township (烈嶼), with the man landing on the beach at about 5:15am. He was detained and taken for questioning. The 43-year-old man, surnamed Qian (錢), said he departed Xiamen at 1am and began rowing toward Kinmen, a distance of about 6km. Qian said he is unemployed, but came in pursuit of freedom and democracy. As he did not enter Taiwan legally, he is likely to be prosecuted for violating the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法), which carries a prison term of up to three years. After serving his sentence, he is expected to be repatriated to China.
DIPLOMACY
Wen Jiabao statue removed
A statue of former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) erected in a private cultural park in Keelung has been removed less than one day after it was formally unveiled, with the park calling the statue a representation of a “Taiwanese hero.” Keelung Mayor Lin Yu-chang (林右昌) of the Democratic Progressive Party on Wednesday said it was “highly improper” to present a former Chinese leader as a hero of Taiwan. This gives people an “extremely bad” impression, Lin said, adding that he suggested the statue at the Embrace Cultural and Creative Park be removed as soon as possible.
CRIME
Police station, homes raided
Prosecutors conducted raids at eight locations around the greater Taipei area, including police stations, residences and businesses, to investigate alleged police corruption with officers accused of receiving bribes to protect underground gambling dens. The investigation was headed up by New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office, and units from Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau. Ten people were detained in relation to the investigation, including one officer and two detectives from police stations in New Taipei City. The police officers implicated in the case are suspected of receiving NT$30,000 in bribes each month from operators of two gambling dens, one in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), and the other in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). After receiving reports of corruption, prosecutors put surveillance and wiretaps on the gambling operations and other locations for just over one year, and found three police officers used mobile phone messages to alert the gambling dens to raids, along with other collusion, while receiving monthly bribes in cash during visits to the dens.
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: