■Politics
Ma tells KMT to get cracking
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) urged his party yesterday to begin grooming potential candidates for the next Taipei mayoral election as soon as possible. Ma made the appeal during a KMT Central Standing Committee meeting when he spoke in his capacity as a committee member. Ma received 873,102 votes, or 64.11 percent of the ballots cast, in Saturday's election, exceeding the number of votes he received in the 1998 election by more than 110,000. While thanking the KMT for its support in the campaign, Ma urged the party not to get carried away by the victory, saying that it should learn from each election and build up its strength accordingly. He said that he would devote himself to running the city over the next four years so as to solicit more support from Taipei residents.
■ Politics
Yu congratulates victors
Premier Yu Shyi-kun congratulated Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Kaohsiung Mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) yesterday for winning re-election. He said he hoped that both will use the will of the people as their guide in city administration over the next four years. He also urged the newly elected city council members to be the voices of the people and to monitor their city's administrations to ensure the continued development of the cities. Yu said he was gratified that Saturday's elections were held in a peaceful manner, although there were still reports of vote-buying.
■ Health
DOH launches new Web site
The Department of Health has launched an English-language Web site (http://www.doh.gov.tw/) to provide information on medical services and to publicize efforts to join the WHO. The site offers healthcare-related news, statistics and regulations on employing foreign medical professionals. The site is part of the department's effort to accelerate the internationalization of local health care and promote the National Development Plan, the department said in a press release on Tuesday.
■ Zoos
Kinkajous given to Beijing
Four Taiwan-bred kinkajous, or honeybears, have been given to the Beijing Zoo in the first cross-strait exchange involving animals, a Taipei Zoo official said yesterday. The four kinkajous, aged between 6 and 10 years old, were delivered by air to Beijing Tuesday as the first step in an animal-exchange project, Taipei Zoo spokesman Chao Ming-chieh (趙明杰) said. They were among the 14 kinkajous bred by the Taipei Zoo, Chao added. Kinkajous, found from Mexico to Brazil, are related to raccoons. The exchange project was sealed in August 2000 after rounds of negotiations between animal experts from the two sides, Chao told the media. It had not been decided what animals Beijing would give Taipei in return, he said.
■ Bootleg liquor
Harsher punishment planned
The government will mete out much harsher punishment for those convicted of producing, importing or distributing bootlegged liquor, under a draft revision of tobacco and liquor regulations passed by an Executive Yuan floor meeting yesterday. The draft stipulates prison terms of up to three years, or three times the existing maximum. Offenders will also be fined between NT$600,000 (US$17,140) and NT$3 million, or twice the existing fine.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift