■ Diplomacy
Salvadoran president to visit
Salvadoran President Antonio Saca is scheduled to make his first state visit to Taiwan later this month for the second Democratic Pacific Assembly, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. During this visit, Saca is also expected to discuss bilateral cooperation on tourism and trade, MOFA officials said. The 39-year-old Saca, a member of the Nationalist Republican Alliance party, was elected president March 21 this year. Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) invited Saca to visit Taiwan when she attended his June 1 inauguration. The second Democratic Pacific Assembly, organized by Lu, is set to take place in Taipei from Aug. 13 to Aug. 15.
■ Society
Cadet cremated
The army cadet who died late last month after developing a fever two days earlier was cremated in Kaohsiung yesterday. The cadet, surnamed Yen, at the Taiwan Military Academy in Fengshan, Kaohsiung, died on July 25 at the age of 20. Because of Yen's outstanding academic performance, the academy decided to present him with an honorary commencement certificate posthumously. Representatives of the army cadets and the school faculty also came to Kaohsiung Municipal Funeral Home to bid farewell to Yen. Yen's death caused alarm, as about two dozen army cadets came down with high fever at about the same time, but their conditions stabilized after treatment in hospitals.
■ Society
Liou in calendar shocker
A Taiwanese-American and former member of US President Bush's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Sean Liou (劉幸誠), has been included in a calendar for the upcoming US Republican National Convention. The Republicans will hold a convention in Santiago, California starting Aug. 6, and a national convention in New York in September. The 2005 calendar aims to highlight the commitment of the Republicans to the protection of civil rights and the determination to promote minority group leaders to serve in major government positions. For this reason, the calendar includes such famous Republicans as President Abraham Lincoln, State Secretary Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Liou, 47, graduated from a university in Changhua and holds a masters in mathematics from the University of Massachusetts. He serves as a member of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's ?ansition Team?nd is dedicated to helping Asian Americans integrate into American society and upgrade their social status.
■ Diplomacy
Condolences offered
The government is concerned about the large fire that occurred in the downtown area of Paraguay's capital on Sunday and killed nearly 300 people, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said yesterday. Anna Kao (高安), deputy director of the ministry's Department of Information and Cultural Affairs, said that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) have sent messages to Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte Frutos to express their sympathy and condolences for the victims. The government and the private sector will also do their utmost in the follow-up relief efforts, Kao said. The fire swept through a busy shopping center on the outskirts of Asuncion at midday on Sunday.
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
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