A team of three Taiwanese experts have flown to China to collect first-hand information on the outbreak of viral pneumonia there after Taipei and Beijing clashed over the issue, a top health official said yesterday.
"The three left here this morning. Probably they are already in Guangzhou at this moment," Lee Long-teng (
Among the three Taiwan experts are Wang Li-hsin (
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which has killed more than 100 people around the world, is believed to have originated in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.
The visit was in response to an invitation by a non-governmental organization from China, Lee said.
But he declined to give too many details of the trip for fear of sparking fresh bickering between the two countries.
"Taiwan will not play up the visit, nor will we use this as an excuse to push for Taiwan's joining of the World Health Organization [WHO]," Lee said.
President Chen Shui-bian (
The allegations have been denied by China, which said it was willing to work with Taiwan to curb the spread of deadly illness.
"The pressing task of the moment is for the two sides to step up cooperation on the basis of caring for the people and take joint measures to put this under effective control," Chinese Health Minister Zhang Wenkang (
Taiwan's Center for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday confirmed the 20th "probable" case in Taipei.
Five of the 20 cases have been discharged from hospitals and the country has yet to report any SARS-related deaths.
The CDC said most of the country's SARS cases had shown symptoms of the sometimes deadly disease following trips to Hong Kong and China.
The government has banned visits by civil servants to China and the other SARS-affected areas, including Hong Kong and Vietnam.
Thirty-five earthquakes have exceeded 5.5 on the Richter scale so far this year, the most in 14 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said on Facebook on Thursday. A large earthquake in Hualien County on April 3 released five times as much the energy as the 921 Earthquake on Sept. 21, 1999, the agency said in its latest earthquake report for this year. Hualien County has had the most national earthquake alerts so far this year at 64, with Yilan County second with 23 and Changhua County third with nine, the agency said. The April 3 earthquake was what caused the increase in
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is unlikely to attempt an invasion of Taiwan during US president-elect Donald Trump’s time in office, Taiwanese and foreign academics said on Friday. Trump is set to begin his second term early next year. Xi’s ambition to establish China as a “true world power” has intensified over the years, but he would not initiate an invasion of Taiwan “in the near future,” as his top priority is to maintain the regime and his power, not unification, Tokyo Woman’s Christian University distinguished visiting professor and contemporary Chinese politics expert Akio Takahara said. Takahara made the comment at a
DEFENSE: This month’s shipment of 38 modern M1A2T tanks would begin to replace the US-made M60A3 and indigenous CM11 tanks, whose designs date to the 1980s The M1A2T tanks that Taiwan expects to take delivery of later this month are to spark a “qualitative leap” in the operational capabilities of the nation’s armored forces, a retired general told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) in an interview published yesterday. On Tuesday, the army in a statement said it anticipates receiving the first batch of 38 M1A2T Abrams main battle tanks from the US, out of 108 tanks ordered, in the coming weeks. The M1 Abrams main battle tank is a generation ahead of the Taiwanese army’s US-made M60A3 and indigenously developed CM11 tanks, which have
CASE COUNT: The deceased had advised law enforcement agencies regarding 60 fraud cases this year, leading to the confiscation of NT$9.3 billion in alleged illegal proceeds Prosecutors yesterday launched an investigation into the death of cryptocurrency expert Miffy Chen (陳梅慧), who died in a car crash on Wednesday under what some consider to be suspicious circumstances following her work with law enforcement to track down NT$9.3 billion (US$286.97 million) in alleged illegal proceeds. Prosecutor-General Hsing Tai-chao (邢泰釗) tasked the Hsinchu District Prosecutors’ Office with investigating the incident following requests from the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) and other agencies with which she worked to crack several prominent cases involving financial fraud and money laundering. Chen was killed in a six-car pileup near Hsinchu in the northbound lanes of Sun
RSS