■UNITED STATES
Biden defends stimulus plan
Vice President Joseph Biden yesterday defended a US$787 billion stimulus package adopted to jump-start the troubled US economy, but admitted recovery was a long way off. “We still have a long way to go, but clearly we are closer to recovery today than we were in January,” Biden wrote in an op-ed piece in the New York Times. “The Recovery Act has been critical to that progress.” “We need relief, recovery and reinvestment to cope with our multifaceted crisis — and only 159 days after it was signed by President [Barack] Obama, the Recovery Act is already at work providing all three.”
■CHINA
Internet users at 338 million
The number of Internet users in China is now greater than the entire population of the US, after rising to 338 million by the end of last month, state media reported yesterday. China’s online population, the largest in the world, rose by 40 million in the first six months of this year, Xinhua news agency reported, citing a report by the China Internet Network Information Center. The number of broadband Internet connections rose by 10 million to 93.5 million in the first half of the year, the report said. About 95 percent of townships were connected to broadband by early last month and 92.5 percent of villages had telephone lines that could be used for Internet access, Xinhua said, citing the official data.
■TOURISM
Spain expects 10% drop
Spain expects foreign tourist arrivals to drop by up to 10 percent this year because to the global economic downturn, Industry and Tourism Minister Miguel Sebastian told reporters after meeting with sector leaders in the holiday island of Palma de Mallorca. The decline is mostly the result of a sharp fall in the number of visitors from the UK, Spain’s main source of foreign visitors, because of the drop in the value of the pound and severe recession, he said. The number of foreign tourists who visited Spain fell 11.4 percent during the first half of this year over the same time last year to 23.6 million, government data released last week showed.
■SECURITIES
Schumer calls for ‘flash’ ban
Charles Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the US Senate, asked the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to ban so-called flash orders for stocks, saying they give high-speed traders an unfair advantage, according to a letter he sent to SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro on Friday. “This kind of unfair access seriously compromises the integrity of our markets and creates a two-tiered system, where a privileged group of insiders receives preferential treatment,” Schumer wrote in the letter. Flash orders make up less than 4 percent of US stock trading, Direct Edge and Bats said. Schumer, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, said he will introduce legislation to ban flash orders if the SEC doesn’t act on his request.
■ENERGY
Paraguay, Brazil end dispute
Brazil agreed on Saturday to triple the amount it pays Paraguay for energy from the massive Itaipu hydroelectric dam on their border, ending a long-running dispute that had soured relations between the two neighbors. Paraguay also won the right to gradually sell excess energy from the dam directly to the Brazilian market instead of doing so exclusively through state-owned power utility Eletrobras. That move will allow Paraguay to fetch more for the power at market prices.
TECH EFFECT: While Chiayi County was the oldest region in the nation, Hsinchu county and city, home of the nation’s chip industry, were the youngest, the report showed Seven of the nation’s administrative regions, encompassing 57.2 percent of Taiwan’s townships and villages, became “super-aged societies” in June, the Ministry of the Interior said in its latest report. A region is considered super-aged if 20 percent of the population is aged 65 or older. The ministry report showed that Taiwan had 4,391,744 people aged 65 or older as of June, representing 18.76 percent of the total population and an increase of 1,024,425 people compared with August 2018. In June, the nation’s elderly dependency ratio was 27.3 senior citizens per 100 working-aged people, an increase of 7.39 people over August 2018, it said. That
‘UNITED FRONT’: The married couple allegedly produced talk show videos for platforms such as Facebook and YouTube to influence Taiwan’s politics A husband and wife affiliated with the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP) were indicted yesterday for allegedly receiving NT$74 million (US$2.32 million) from China to make radio and digital media propaganda to promote the Chinese government’s political agenda and influence the outcome of Taiwan’s elections. Chang Meng-chung (張孟崇) and his wife, Hung Wen-ting (洪文婷), allegedly received a total of NT$74 million from China between 2021 and last year to promote candidates favored by Beijing, contravening the Anti-Infiltration Act (反滲透法) and election laws, the Chiayi District Prosecutors’ Office said. The couple acted as Beijing’s propaganda mouthpiece by disparaging Hong Kong democracy activists
EARLY ARRIVALS: The first sets of HIMARS purchased from the US arrived ahead of their scheduled delivery, with troops already training on the platforms, a source said The Ministry of National Defense (MND) yesterday said it spotted 35 Chinese military aircraft, including fighters and bombers, flying to the south of Taiwan proper on the way to exercises in the Pacific, a second consecutive day it has reported such activities. The Chinese Ministry of National Defense did not respond to a request for comment on the missions, reported just days before tomorrow’s US presidential election. The US is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself. Its arms sales to Taipei include a US$2 billion missile system announced last month. The MND said that from 9am yesterday,
A Control Yuan member yesterday said he would initiate an investigation into why the number of foreign nationals injured or killed in traffic incidents has nearly doubled in the past few years, and whether government agencies’ mechanisms were ineffective in ensuring road safety. Control Yuan member Yeh Ta-hua (葉大華) said in a news release that Taiwan has been described as a “living hell for pedestrians” and traffic safety has become an important national security issue. According to a National Audit Office report released last year, more than 780,000 foreign nationals were legally residing in Taiwan in 2019, which grew to more than
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