Taiwanese trekker Liang Sheng-yue (梁聖岳), who went missing for 47 days in the Himalayas, is ready to return to Taiwan, a hospital in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, said yesterday.
Grande Hospital, where Liang has been recovering since his rescue on Wednesday last week, said he was doing well and that he and his father, who flew to the hospital to be with his son, had taken care of the discharge procedures.
Liang, who lost 30kg during his ordeal, spent most of his time in the hospital reading and resting, the hospital said.
Liang, 21, and his girlfriend, Liu Chen-chun (劉宸君), 18, arrived in Nepal from India in late February and began their trek in early March.
Their families in Taiwan lost contact with the couple after March 3 and formally requested help on March 15 after the couple failed to establish contact as scheduled on March 10.
Liang said that on March 11, or three days after they embarked on the trek, they encountered heavy snow at an altitude of 4,000m.
They tried to get down the mountain to find shelter when Liu fell off a cliff and plunged 200m into a ravine.
They were unable to climb up again and stayed in a cave to wait for assistance. Their food only sustained them for two weeks, after which they only had salt and water.
Liu died three days before Liang was found on Wednesday by a team of experienced rescuers when they spotted vultures circling above the cave where the couple took refuge.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods