SOCIETY
TAS holding flea market to help poor
The Taipei American School’s (TAS) Orphanage Club will hold a Flea Market and Book Sale on Saturday to raise funds for needy children and orphans at home and abroad. The flea market, featuring a wide range of new and used items, will be held from 10am to 3pm, while the book sale will end at 5pm, the club said. Thousands of books will be on offer, from novels, mysteries, biographies and travel books to cookbooks, children’s fiction and English-teaching books. Both activities will be held at the TAS campus in Tianmu, rain or shine, it said. For more information, contact Richard Arnold at (02) 2873-9900 extension 239 or Mrs Koh at (02) 2874-0902.
SOCIETY
Animals Taiwan to host bazaar
Animals Taiwan will hold its first annual Summer Charity Bazaar next Saturday at Yuma Grill from 11am to 3pm, the group said. All proceeds will go to help stray and injured animals, it said. A wide array of items, ranging from antiques to jewelry, homemade bags, kids’ products and food, will be sold at the bazaar, it said. Admission is NT$600, which includes a buffet lunch and a NT$100 shopping voucher. Tickets to a raffle for various prizes — from hotel accommodations to digital cameras — are on sale. For information, contact Michelle at 0955-360-693 or Liza at 0932-344-687, or e-mail liza@animalstaiwan.org.
SOCIETY
More foreigners naturalized: ministry
A total of 13,232 foreigners were naturalized as Republic of China (ROC) citizens last year, an increase of 2,468 over the 2007 figure, the Ministry of the Interior said on Saturday. Last year, 98.1 percent of the naturalized citizens were foreign women married to local men. Close to 81 percent of them were from Vietnam, followed by 9.4 percent from Indonesia and 4.7 percent from Cambodia, ministry statistics showed. Meanwhile, about 780 Taiwanese citizens lost their ROC citizenship last year, up by 64 compared with the 2007 number. The figures showed that 73.5 percent of them made the decision on their own, with 41.9 percent renouncing their citizenship to apply for Japanese citizenship, 20.6 percent seeking Singapore citizenship and 17.8 percent applying for South Korean citizenship.
DIPLOMACY
EETO marks Europe Day
The European Economic and Trade Office (EETO) held a reception on Friday to celebrate the 52nd anniversary of Europe Day. Celebrated on May 9, Europe Day marks the anniversary of the Schuman Declaration, in which former French foreign minister Robert Schuman proposed a new form of political arrangement for Europe. Six countries decided in the 1957 Treaty of Rome to build a European Economic Community, which has evolved into the EU. EETO head Guy Ledoux told the members of the diplomatic corps in Taiwan on Friday that “creativity and innovation” were the theme of this year’s celebration, and the theme had also been applied to the relations between the EU and Taiwan in promoting science, technology and cultural exchanges. “A major innovation in 2009 will also be the opening of the EU Center,” Ledoux said. “This is why we are providing a 1.1 million euro [US$1.5 million] grant to a consortium of universities led by National Taiwan University with the task of increasing alliances between the EU and the Taiwanese public,” Ledoux said.
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm early yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, less than a week after a typhoon barreled across the nation. The agency issued an advisory at 3:30am stating that the 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, of the Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point, with a 100km radius. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA
Residents have called on the Taipei City Government to reconsider its plan to demolish a four-decades-old pedestrian overpass near Daan Forest Park. The 42-year-old concrete and steel structure that serves as an elevated walkway over the intersection of Heping and Xinsheng roads is to be closed on Tuesday in preparation for demolition slated for completion by the end of the month. However, in recent days some local residents have been protesting the planned destruction of the intersection overpass that is rendered more poetically as “sky bridge” in Chinese. “This bridge carries the community’s collective memory,” said a man surnamed Chuang
FATALITIES: The storm claimed at least two lives — a female passenger in a truck that was struck by a falling tree and a man who was hit by a utility pole Workers cleared fallen trees and shop owners swept up debris yesterday after one of the biggest typhoons to hit the nation in decades claimed at least two lives. Typhoon Kong-rey was packing winds of 184kph when it slammed into eastern Taiwan on Thursday, uprooting trees, triggering floods and landslides, and knocking out power as it swept across the nation. A 56-year-old female foreign national died from her injuries after the small truck she was in was struck by a falling tree on Provincial Highway 14A early on Thursday. The second death was reported at 8pm in Taipei on Thursday after a 48-year-old man
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm earlier today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, in this year's Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am, the CWA said. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) with a 100km radius, it said. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA meteorologist Huang En-hung (黃恩宏) said. However, a more accurate forecast would be made on Wednesday, when Yinxing is
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