MARINE AFFAIRS
Fishing boat missing
The Fisheries Agency on Friday said that a Kaohsiung-registered fishing vessel was missing in the Indian Ocean. The Lien Sheng Fa (聯昇發), registered in Kaohsiung as CT4-2896 with radio call sign BJ4896, sailed from Port Louis in Mauritius on Oct. 7 last year, the agency said in a statement. The 98-tonne ship measures 29.7m and has a crew of one Taiwanese and 15 Indonesians, it said. Family members of the ship’s crew on Thursday updated the agency on the vessel’s operations, but by noon the same day it received notice from the same people that they had lost contact with the ship, the agency said. The last update from the ship’s Vessel Monitoring System was at noon on Sunday last week, it said. In addition to seeking the assistance of seven other Taiwanese vessels operating in the region to look for the ship, the agency said it has contacted nearby nations to assist in the search.
COVID-19
Case total tops 10 million
Taiwan yesterday reported 13,526 new cases of COVID-19, which pushed the total number of those infected by the disease since the start of the pandemic to more than 10 million, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said. Among the new cases reported yesterday, 13,281 were contracted domestically, a 10.2 percent drop from the same day a week earlier, CECC data showed. Taiwan also reported 53 new deaths from the disease, bringing the total number of confirmed COVID-19 fatalities in the country to 17,818. The nation has recorded 10,012,276 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began in early 2020. The CECC is no longer providing daily information on the age distribution, health status and vaccination records of those who die, nor is it releasing daily infection numbers from each administrative region.
MILITARY
Balloon detected in north
The military on Friday detected a balloon in the nation’s north, the air force said in a statement, without indicating whether the balloon came from China. The object was determined to be a weather balloon, but an air force aircraft was still diverted mid-mission to observe the balloon until it left Taiwan’s airspace, the statement said. The military also informed the Civil Aeronautics Administration of the balloon to ensure it posed no risk to civilian aircraft, it said. This is not the first time Taiwan’s military has detected a weather balloon believed to have come from China. On Feb. 16, the army’s Dongyin Area Command, which is responsible for guarding Lienchiang County’s Dongyin Island (東引), said that soldiers found the wreckage of a suspected weather balloon believed to have originated in China.
TOURISM
Visitors to Japan spike
The number of travelers entering Japan from Taiwan last month spiked to almost 260,000 following the removal of COVID-19 border restrictions by both countries late last year, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said on Thursday. The number of visitors was up from a year earlier and the same month in 2019, Taiwan-Japan Relations Association Secretary-General Chou Shyue-yow (周學佑) said. The 259,300 outbound tourists to Japan last month was up 67 percent from the number in January 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Chou said, citing statistics from the Japan National Tourism Organization. After the pandemic began, travel among Taiwanese to Japan all but vanished and in January last year totaled just 492, Chou said.
CAUTION: Based on intelligence from the nation’s security agencies, MOFA has cautioned Taiwanese travelers about heightened safety risks in China-friendly countries The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday urged Taiwanese to be aware of their safety when traveling abroad, especially in countries that are friendly to China. China in June last year issued 22 guidelines that allow its courts to try in absentia and sentence to death so-called “diehard” Taiwanese independence activists, even though Chinese courts have no jurisdiction in Taiwan. Late last month, a senior Chinese official gave closed-door instructions to state security units to implement the guidelines in countries friendly to China, a government memo and a senior Taiwan security official said, based on information gathered by Taiwan’s intelligence agency. The
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said yesterday that it is looking to hire 8,000 people this year, at a time when the tech giant is expanding production capacity to maintain its lead over competitors. To attract talent, TSMC would launch a large-scale recruitment campaign on campuses across Taiwan, where a newly recruited engineer with a master’s degree could expect to receive an average salary of NT$2.2 million (US$60,912), which is much higher than the 2023 national average of NT$709,000 for those in the same category, according to government statistics. TSMC, which accounted for more than 60 percent
Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢), a Taiwanese businessman and deputy convener of the nation’s National Climate Change Committee, said yesterday that “electrical power is national power” and nuclear energy is “very important to Taiwan.” Tung made the remarks, suggesting that his views do not align with the country’s current official policy of phasing out nuclear energy, at a forum organized by the Taiwan People’s Party titled “Challenges and Prospects of Taiwan’s AI Industry and Energy Policy.” “Taiwan is currently pursuing industries with high added- value and is developing vigorously, and this all requires electricity,” said the chairman
The National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday that it will revoke the dependent-based residence permit of a Chinese social media influencer who reportedly “openly advocated for [China’s] unification through military force” with Taiwan. The Chinese national, identified by her surname Liu (劉), will have her residence permit revoked in accordance with Article 14 of the “Measures for the permission of family- based residence, long-term residence and settlement of people from the Mainland Area in the Taiwan Area,” the NIA said in a news release. The agency explained it received reports that Liu made “unifying Taiwan through military force” statements on her online
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