■ Crime
Girls offered for sale
EBay halted an auction this week and suspended a Taiwanese user who allegedly tried to sell three Vietnamese girls on the Internet site for a starting bid of US$5,400. The auction, which began on March 2 on eBay's Taiwan site, did not include a detailed description of the goods for sale, but said the "items" were from Vietnam and would be "shipped to Taiwan only." The site included five photos of three people. One dark-haired woman in a white shirt wore makeup and blue nail polish, and the other two appeared to be girls no older than their early teens. The 10-day auction had a starting price of NT$180,000, or US$5,411. Vietnamese activist groups in Australia and the US noticed the listing as early as March 5 and began sending e-mails to women's rights and immigrant advocates around the world. Many of them contacted eBay, and earlier this week customer service representatives pulled the auction. "There couldn't be a clearer case of what's not allowed on eBay," spokesman Hani Durzy said on Friday.
■ Referendum
Dissident fined
Chinese dissident writer Cao Chang-ching (曹長青) was fined NT$500,000 (US$15,000) for publicly lecturing on the importance of the referendum on Friday night, a move considered illegal by the Kaohsiung election monitoring group. Cao delivered the speech on invitation of the northern Kaohsiung chapter of the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU). Accompanied by law enforcement officers, auditor of the Kaohsiung election monitoring group Tsai Chi-ron (蔡枝榮) interrupted Cao's speech several times on the grounds that foreigners are banned from engaging in any electioneering activities for presidential candidates. Refusing to end his speech, Cao said that the speech was not aimed at electioneering for any particular presidential candidate but to show his support for Taiwanese people and Taiwan's democratic development. Huang Chao-chan (黃昭展), chairman of the TSU's northern Kaohsiung chapter, said the punishment was unacceptable and pledged to file for an appeal.
■ Health
SARS remedy mass produced
A product that researchers claim is effective in fighting SARS has been put into mass production, a Tamkang University professor reported yesterday. Adam S.Y. Lee (李世元), head of the Department of Chemistry, said that at present, a chemical compound that is 99 percent pure can be produced in quantities of 10kg per week that can be provided to manufacturers who produce anti-SARS masks and protective garments. Lee noted that the Ministry of Economic Affairs had originally commissioned the National Taiwan University (NTU) to research the anti-SARS product, which was jointly developed by the NTU and Tamkang University last year and has been proved effective in fighting the atypical pneumonia.
■ Infrastructure
LED plan almost complete
A plan to replace incandescent lamps with light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in certain traffic lights will be completed in March, creating major energy savings, the Energy Commission under the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Once the plan has been fully implemented, 280,000 of the 646,000 incandescent lamps used in traffic lights around the country will have been replaced, which will save 8,000 watts of electricity per year and reduce dioxide emissions by 75,000 tonnes through the savings on electricity, which is usually produced by burning coal.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
AMENDMENT: Contact with certain individuals in China, Hong Kong and Macau must be reported, and failure to comply could result in a prison sentence, the proposal stated The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) yesterday voted against a proposed bill by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers that would require elected officials to seek approval before visiting China. DPP Legislator Puma Shen’s (沈伯洋) proposed amendments to the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), stipulate that contact with certain individuals in China, Hong Kong and Macau should be reported, while failure to comply would be punishable by prison sentences of up to three years, alongside a fine of NT$10 million (US$309,041). Fifty-six voted with the TPP in opposition
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai