■ Accidents
Falling tree injures student
A Taiwanese woman studying in New Zealand was in critical condition in a hospital yesterday after being crushed by a tree blown down during a storm, news reports said. The woman, aged about 21, suffered serious head injuries when a tree fell on her near Waikato University in Hamilton, as winds of up to 150kph lashed the North Island on Wednesday. Parents of the student, whose name was not released, were flying to New Zealand, reports said.
■ Diplomacy
Okinawa office established
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs established a representative office in Naha, Okinawa on Feb. 1, deputy secretary-general of the ministry-affiliated Association of East Asian Relations James Liao (廖經邦) said yesterday. The new office aims to deal with the increasingly frequent trade interactions between Taiwan and Okinawa, said Liao, adding that it had nothing to do with Taiwan's stance on the Diaoyutais (釣魚台), an island chain that Taiwan claims sovereignty over. Okinawa comprises the Ryukyu Islands and Diaoyutais. In the past, Taiwan's representative office in Okinawa existed as a non-governmental organization.
■ Travel
No more stamps
Passengers leaving the country no longer need to have their boarding passes stamped, the National Immigration Agency said. Immigration officers at the country's international airports put a stamp on departing passengers' boarding pass as a part of passenger identification procedures, but the agency now considers this action a waste of time. It said that if each stamp took two seconds, the total time saved by the new measure, applied to an estimated 20,000 passengers each day, would be 11 hours. The agency added that stamping boarding passes was no longer practiced in other nations and contributed little to security.
■ Politics
Majority favor referendum
Nearly 85 percent of Taiwanese believe a referendum should be held whenever Taiwan signs agreements with China related to its sovereignty, a poll released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) showed. The poll showed that 84.8 percent of respondents favored referendums, compared with 9.7 percent who said they were not necessary. Meanwhile, 83.2 percent said only Taiwanese were entitled to define the cross-strait status quo, compared with 1.7 percent who said that Beijing should define it and 6.4 percent who said both sides should have a say. The polls also showed that 69.2 percent thought Taiwan was an independent and sovereign country, compared with 14.6 percent who said Taiwan was part of China. The poll was conducted on March 7 and March 8. A total of 1,034 samples were collected.
■ Litigation
Court rules against MOEA
The Taipei High Administrative Court yesterday withdrew a NT$5 million fine that the Ministry of Economic Affairs imposed on Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) founder Richard Chang (張汝京) in 2005. The ministry alleged that Chang, who it says was then a Taiwanese citizen, invested illegally in China. In addition to fining Chang, the ministry also sought to force him to withdraw his investment within six months. Chang invested in Shanghai-based SMIC in December 2000 without obtaining permission from the ministry, claimg he was a US citizen.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
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