■POLITICS
Congress ties established
The legislature established amity associations with members of the Mongolian and Danish congresses yesterday. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), who heads both of the associations, said the objective of the organizations was to urge the government to increase cultural exchanges with the two nations. Legislators are scheduled to visit Mongolia during the legislature’s upcoming recess, she said. The current legislative session, originally slated to go into recess today, will be extended until next Tuesday.
■TECHNOLOGY
Taiwanese Web less risky
Taiwan’s Web domain was ranked among the world’s least risky last year in a list topped by Japan and Australia, according to an annual report released by US-based security technology company McAfee. Also on the list were Canada, Indonesia, Vietnam, Mexico and most nations in Europe and South America. McAfee uses a technology, SiteAdvisor, to test Web sites for browser exploitation, phishing, excessive pop-ups and malicious downloads and analysis. The report was produced after analyzing more than 27 million Web sites and 104 top-level domains. It revealed that Africa’s Cameroon was the Web’s riskiest domain last year, followed by China and Samoa. The report said Cameroon’s extension .cm was easily exploited by unscrupulous users because it was similar to the popular extension .com. The report also showed a rapid deterioration in Singapore’s domain security, with the country ranked as the world’s 10th-riskiest domain last year, up from 67th the previous year, mainly because of Chinese pharmacy spam sites. Hong Kong was the riskiest domain in 2008.
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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