FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Passport issue linked to vote
Kiribati’s reported decision to no longer accept Taiwan’s passport might be related to its upcoming general elections, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. A Taiwanese surnamed Huang (黃), who tried to visit Kiribati in June, wrote on Facebook that an immigration official told him the Pacific island country no longer accepted Taiwan’s passport and denied his visa application. Due to the lack of official relations with Kiribati, the ministry looked into the situation through a third party, East Asia and Pacific Affairs Deputy Director-General Eric Chen (陳俊吉) said. Kiribati authorities had not made any public announcement on the decision not to accept the passport, Chen said. Kiribati severed ties with Taiwan and switched diplomatic recognition to China in 2019. The ministry has since learned that Kiribati has toughened up its screening of all inbound foreign visitors over the past few months ahead of its parliamentary elections today. It now believes the June incident when Huang was denied a visa did not only target Taiwanese, Chen said.
CROSS-STRAIT
Crew members returned
Four crew members of a fishing boat detained by China were returned to Taiwan yesterday morning after 42 days in Chinese custody, officials said. The crew members — a Taiwanese man surnamed Ting (丁) and three Indonesians — were brought to the median line of the Taiwan Strait, where they were picked up by the Da Jin Man No. 96 fishing boat, the officials said. The captain of the detained Da Jin Man No. 88 and the boat itself are still being held in China pending the completion of judicial proceedings, they said. As China is prosecuting the case as a matter of illegal fishing during a seasonal moratorium, it involves more than only a fine and has resulted in more than a month of cross-strait negotiations. The four crew members were returned at 10:30am and were scheduled to return to Penghu County today. The captain was reportedly safe, although his movements were restricted to the hotel at which he was staying, the officials said. Former legislator Lin Pin-kuan (林炳坤) and others visited him at the hotel for 20 minutes in the morning before going to the wharf where the four fishers departed to make sure they boarded safely, they said.
ENVIRONMENT
Green achievements touted
Representative to Israel Abby Lee (李雅萍) presented Taiwan’s policies and achievements in green architecture to Israeli officials and non-governmental organizations (NGO) at a forum on Monday. Lee said that more than 30 architects, engineers and city planners attended the forum on sustainable development in Modi’in-Maccabim-Re’ut, a city in central Israel. The forum was jointly organized by NGOs including the Israel Green Building Council and the Israeli Association of Municipal Engineers. Lee spoke about Taiwan’s experience and policies relating to environmental protection, green architecture and earthquake resistance, and about its cooperation with Israel on environmental issues. Taipei and Jerusalem in 2013 signed a memorandum of understanding on environmental protection cooperation, and dialogue and exchanges between the two sides on environmental issues have been “institutionalized,” she said. In March, Taiwan announced its Pathway to Net Zero Emissions in 2050 strategy, which outlines methods and key milestones to achieve a net zero economy, according to the National Development Council.
In terms of sustainable architecture, the policy includes a milestone that “new public buildings are energy efficiency ‘class 1,’ or nearly zero emissions” by 2030, it said, adding that 100 percent of new buildings and more than 85 percent of existing buildings should be near zero emissions by 2050.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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