■ Crime
PFP legislators indicted
Four People First Party legislators were indicted by Taipei prosecutors yesterday for allegedly leading the unruly crowd that gathered outside the Central Election Commission on March 26. According to the indictment, the four legislators -- Chiu Yi (邱毅), Feng Ting-kuo (馮定國), Lee Ching-hua (李慶華) and Lin Hui-kuan (林惠官) -- led a group of protesters that smashed the commission building's glass doors and attempted to stop commission employees from posting the official results of the March 20 presidential election on its bulletin board. The police attempted to disperse the crowd because the protest was not legal. According to witnesses' and police officers' testimony, the four legislators ignored the police's orders. Chiu is alleged to have shouted through a loudspeaker: "Beat [President] Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁)! Beat the commission!" The four legislators told prosecutors that they were not aware of the police's efforts to disperse the protesters -- an argument the prosecutors rejected because the protests were illegal in the first place. Chiu, Feng, Lee and Lin were indicted on charges of violating the Assembly and Parade Law (集會遊行法). Prosecutors did not recommend a sentence for the legislators.
■ Diplomacy
Close S Korea ties praised
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) said yesterday he looks forward to seeing relations between Taiwan and South Korea grow. Chen made the remarks while meeting with a delegation of academics and business executives from South Korea, headed by South Korean National Assemblyman Lew Jyun-sung. Noting that Taiwan is now South Korea's fifth-largest trading partner, Chen said there is still ample room for growth in bilateral trade and economic cooperation. South Korea is Taiwan's fourth-largest source of imports and sixth-largest export market. Chen said he hopes that bilateral trade and investment will continue expanding in the years ahead. Despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties, Chen said Taiwan and South Korea have enjoyed longstanding friendship.
■ Weather
Typhoon strengthens
Typhoon Dianmu -- the sixth typhoon reported in the Pacific this year -- had gained strength and been upgraded to a strong typhoon, although it was not expected to directly affect the country, the Central Weather Bureau reported yesterday. Dianmu was centered some 1,800km southeast of Taiwan at 8am yesterday, moving in a north-northwesterly direction at a speed of 17km per hour, meteorologists said. With a radius of 180km and packing maximum sustained winds of up to 130km per hour, Dianmu was not expected to directly affect this country because it was expected to shift to a northwesterly course and eventually sweep toward Japan, the bureau reported.
■ Society
Wheelchair pageant planned
The Eden Social Welfare Foundation opened registration for their first annual Wheelchair Beauty Competition yesterday. Registration will close on June 30. Women around the nation between 18 and 40 are invited to enter the contest -- but only if they suffer from a handicap. "The contest is meant to encourage a breaking of beauty stereotypes," said organizer Carol Lu (呂惠萱). "Confidence, kindness and personality should also be criteria for a `beautiful woman.'"
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
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