■ Iraq
Public prefers anti-war camp
Taiwanese tend to oppose the US-led war against Iraq but most still have a good impression of the US, according to a newspaper poll released yesterday. The survey by a Chinese-language newspaper, found that 37 percent of those polled did not support war with Iraq without UN approval. Some 28 percent supported the war, while the rest had no opinion. Despite ambivalence about the Iraq conflict, 67 percent of the respondents said they still have a good impression of the US. Thirteen percent had a "rather bad" impression and 4 percent a "very bad" impression, the survey said. The rest had no opinion. The telephone poll of 908 people, conducted on Monday, had a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points.
■ Piracy
Police seize counterfeiters
Taiwan police seized 200,000 pirated music and video CDs Tuesday, including copies of the Oscar-winning films Chicago and The Hours. Acting on a tip, police seized the CDs and VCDs in a packaging house in Taiching, central Taiwan. They arrested Tai Chen-feng, 37, the suspected leader of the gang. "Most of the VCDs are porn films, but there are also Chicago and The Hours which won Oscar awards on Sunday," a police spokesman said. The ring sold the discs at night-markets, charging NT$60 for a film VCD and NT$400 for 10 music CDs, he said. The US has accused Taiwan of being one of the world's leading culprits in producing counterfeit goods.
■ Crime
Police bring fugitives back
Two fugitive criminal suspects were brought back to Taiwan from China via Matsu on Monday, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said. The two suspects, identified as Yang Chin-chien (楊進謙), 44, and Kuo Hung-ching (郭宏慶), 27, are wanted on fraud and extortion charges, CIB officials said, adding that the repatriation was part of cross-strait cooperation in fighting crime. Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation and the Red Cross Society chapters on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait assisted in arranging the deportation, the officials said.
■ Cross-strait ties
PLA status unchanged
China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has not shown any signs of conducting abnormal military activities or upgrading its combat readiness level, a Ministry of National Defense (MND) official said yesterday. MND spokesman Major General Huang Suey-sheng (黃穗生) made the remarks after a Hong Kong newspaper reported that Jiang Zemin (江澤民), chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China, ordered the PLA to raise its combat readiness to the second highest level amid the US-led war in Iraq. "The report was not true," Huang said. "Our military intelligence shows that the PLA has not upgraded its combat readiness nor has it conducted any abnormal military activities," he pointed out.
■ Rally
DPP to join `Taiwan' march
The DPP announced yesterday it will join a rally on May 11 to rectify the country's name. The event is being organized by the "Alliance to Campaign for Rectifying the Name of Taiwan." The DPP said it shares the organization's desire to change the nation's title from Republic of China to Taiwan, adding it is willing to endorse the activity and provide necessary assistance.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai