Taiwan has not reinforced its deployment on Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) in the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration said yesterday in response to a report that the government recently sent a platoon to Itu.
The Taipei Times on Sunday reported that the coast guard sent 30 weapons-trained personnel to the island to help cushion the impact of the stepped-up military deployments of other countries in the disputed waters.
The agency said in a statement that it transferred some personnel stationed on the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) to Itu, the largest of the disputed Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島), on Oct. 16 last year to support the opening of a new wharf there on Dec. 12.
It also sent two patrol boats with 20 crew members to be stationed on Itu on Nov. 26 last year, the statement said.
Those boats are the backbone of the agency’s ocean rescue mission, and “there has not been any such thing as a reinforced deployment,” the agency said.
The wharf is part of Taiwan’s effort to upgrade Taiping’s infrastructure in recent years, it said.
The improved infrastructure will strengthen the island’s security and the transport of materials as well as support ocean research and humanitarian rescue efforts, the coast guard said.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS