■ Labor affairs
Strike decision today
The Taiwan Railway Wor-kers' Union is expected to make a final decision today whether to strike during the Lunar New Year holidays next year. The union made an initial decision on Sept. 11 to strike during the holiday. A union spokesman said a strike would be the workers' last resort to make their opposition to the privatiza-tion of the Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) known to the government. "We are not militant, but we are not afraid of fighting," he said. TRA Administrator Huang Der-chih (黃德治) said yesterday that the govern-ment understands the workers' position. Huang said he believes that the agency will not be privatized, but it has to be market-oriented. The interests of the employees will be well taken care of, he said.
■ Labor affairs
Vietnam jails pair for fraud
Two men were jailed in Vietnam for duping people into handing over money to secure non-existent jobs in Taiwan, Vietnamese officials said yesterday. The Hanoi's People Court on Monday sentenced La Van Hoa, 40, to five years in prison for masterminding the scheme, a court clerk said. An accom-plice was jailed for 30 months, while a woman was given a two-year suspended sentence. The trio were convicted of deceiving 20 people to part with at least US$3,000. Between late 2000 and last November they sent 11 people to Taiwan on tourist visas who discovered upon arrival that they were not eligible to work and the promised jobs did not exist.
■ Politics
KMT to hold Chiang seminar
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said yesterday that it plans to hold an international seminar in late March or early April to commemorate the late Soong May-ling (宋美齡), also known as Madame Chiang Kai-shek. The seminar will be held after the presidential election. The theme of the seminar will focus on the Chiangs' roles in China's modernization, a KMT spokesman said. He said the KMT's party history and cultural affairs departments will flesh out details of the seminar, including the agenda and the attendees.
■ Diplomacy
Sister city pact signed
Taichung yesterday estab-lished sisterhood ties with San Pedro Sula, Honduras' second-largest city. Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) and Taichung City Council Speaker Chang Hung-nien (張宏年) signed the agree-ment with San Pedro Sula City Mayor Oscar Eduardo Kilgore Lopez. Honduran Ambassador Marlene Villela Falbott also witnessed the signing. San Pedro Sula is six times larger than Tai-chung and has a population of 1.5 million. It boasts the greatest number of Taiwan-ese businesspeople of all Central and South American cities. Several thousand Taichung natives currently operate textile or foodstuff businesses in the Honduran city. Hu said the agreement is a good start in terms of cooperation and exchanges.
■ Education
Pact signed with UNC
The National Taiwan Normal University, National Physical Education University and seven other schools signed
a five-year agreement with the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) on Monday to enhance cooperation and academic exchanges. The schools include National Changhua Normal Univer-sity, Taichung Teachers College, Taipei Teachers College, Hualien Teachers College, Hsinchu Teachers College, and Taipei Muni-cipal College of Physical Education.
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