TOURISM
Sand sculptures at Fulong
This year’s Fulong International Sand Sculpture Arts Festival in New Taipei City is to start next Saturday, featuring 76 sculptures by local and foreign artists, the organizers said. Upside-down and underground sculptures are to be included for the first time this year, Wu Ching-fu (吳慶福) of the Northeast and Yilan Coast National Scenic Area Administration told a news conference. The festival is to run until July 15.
CRIME
Second charge for Sun
Taiwanese exchange student Sun An-tso (孫安佐), who was arrested last month for allegedly threatening to shoot up his Pennsylvania high school, has also been charged with possessing instruments of crime. An updated offense disposition information issued on Wednesday by the Delaware County District Court showed that Sun now faces a second charge. Sun had originally been due in court on Wednesday for a hearing on the alleged terrorism threat, but last week that hearing was postponed to April 25. Sun is being held at Delaware County Jail in lieu of US$100,000 bail.
LABOR
Work permit relaxed
The Ministry of Labor has made it easier for international students to apply for work permits. Effective March 23, foreign and overseas compatriot students only have to submit a photocopy of their passports and a work permit application form, Workforce Development Agency division head Chiu Yueh-yun (邱月雲) said on Thursday. They no longer have to provide a consent form from their schools, a full-year academic transcript or school ID, Chiu said. Students can also file their work permit applications via the agency’s Web site, which has Chinese and English-language interfaces, she said.
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: