POLITICS
Taipei mayor to visit US
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) plans to visit New York, Boston and Philadelphia on an official 11-day trip to the US, which starts on Wednesday. The visit would focus on municipal exchanges, a source in the Taipei City Government said. Chiang is to stay in New York for three days, during which he plans to visit Times Square to learn about pedestrian-friendly policies and Citi Field baseball stadium to gather information that could help improve Taipei Dome operations. He is to travel to Boston on Sunday, and meet local city officials at the Massachusetts State House on Monday during the day and deliver a speech titled “Global Taipei: Bridging Tradition and Innovation” at the John F. Kennedy Jr Forum at Harvard University in the evening. Chiang is to visit the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the following day, before taking a train to Philadelphia for additional municipal-related activities. He is scheduled to fly back to Taiwan on Saturday next week.
SOCIETY
Crane falls in Kaohsiung
One Vietnamese worker was killed and one Taiwanese worker was badly injured at a construction site in Kaohsiung’s Fongshan District (鳳山) yesterday morning after a tower crane collapsed, the city’s fire bureau said. First responders found the Vietnamese man’s body under the collapsed crane, with no vital signs, and an unconscious Taiwanese man with multiple bone fractures, the bureau said, adding that it received a report about the incident at about 9:40am. The Taiwanese man, who was the operator of the tower crane, was injured after it fell to the ground and has been hospitalized, Kaohsiung City Labor Affairs Bureau chief secretary Pi Chung-mou (皮忠謀) said. All work at the construction site has been ordered to stop for an investigation into the deadly incident, Pi said. The Labor Affairs Bureau would work with Vietnam’s representative office in Taiwan and help the family of the Vietnamese man make necessary arrangements, including claiming compensation for the work-related death, Pi added.
SPORTS
RCBIC to begin next week
The Kaohsiung Respect Culture Breaking International Championships (RCBIC) are to take place at the Kaohsiung Music Center on Saturday and Sunday next week, featuring Canadian breakdancer B-Boy Phil Wizard, who won the gold medal for men’s breaking in the Paris Olympics last month, the event organizer said. The competition has a total prize of NT$1.5 million (US$46,963) and would have team battles, individual men’s and women’s categories, a category for individuals younger than 15 years old and a new all-style individual category for the first time, the Kaohsiung Sports Development Bureau said. The event would also feature judges and top breakers from the Paris Games, the bureau added. Renowned South Korean breakdancer B-Boy Hong 10 and Menno from the Netherlands, who are three-time Red Bull BC One world champions, are also to participate in the event. Japanese breakdancer B-Girl Ayumi, a competitor in the women’s breaking competition at the Paris Olympics, would serve as a judge. Known for her smooth moves and impressive musicality, Ayumi remains a top-ranked breaker at the age of 40. Another judge is South Korean breakdancer Virus, who is known for integrating crutches into his breaking, the bureau said in the statement.
COLLABORATION: As TSMC is building an advanced wafer fab in Dresden, Germany, it needs to build a comprehensive supply chain in Europe, Joseph Wu said Taiwan is planning to team up with the Czech Republic to build a semiconductor cluster in the European country, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said on Friday. Wu, who led a Taiwanese delegation at the annual GLOBSEC Forum held in Prague from Friday to today, said in a news conference that Taiwan seeks to foster cooperation between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and its counterparts in Czechia. Such cooperation is expected to transform the country into one of the most important semiconductor clusters in Europe over the next three to five years, he added. As TSMC is building an advanced
A joint declaration by Pacific leaders was reissued yesterday morning with mentions of Taiwan removed after China slammed an earlier version as a “mistake” that “must be corrected.” After five days of talks in Tonga, a “cleared” communique was released on Friday that reaffirmed a 30-year-old agreement allowing Taiwan to take part in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). However, the wording immediately raised the ire of Chinese diplomats, who piled pressure on Pacific leaders to amend the document. The forum reissued the communique without explanation yesterday morning, conspicuously deleting the paragraph concerning the bloc’s “relations with Taiwan.” “It must be a
A tropical depression in waters east of the Philippines could develop into a tropical storm as soon as today and bring rainfall as it approaches, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, while issuing heat warnings for 14 cities and counties. Weather model simulations show that there are still considerable differences in the path that the tropical depression is projected to take. It might pass through the Bashi Channel to the South China Sea or turn northeast and move toward the sea south of Japan, CWA forecaster Yeh Chih-chun (葉致均) said, adding that the uncertainty of its movement is still high,
China lacks the ability to “fully” invade Taiwan as it does not have the equipment, but is bringing online advanced new weapons and has other options to threaten Taiwan, such as inspecting foreign cargo ships, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said yesterday. In an annual threat assessment of China sent to lawmakers, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, the ministry said Beijing continues to hone skills such as joint command operations. “However, the use of tactics and strategies against Taiwan is still limited by the natural geographical environment of the Taiwan Strait and insufficient landing equipment and logistic capabilities,”