■ Disasters
Ship capsizes off Taichung
A Panamanian-registered cargo ship capsized in rough seas near Taichung, and four Chinese crew members were missing, the coast guard said yesterday. The Ho Hsin No. 1, with a cargo of gravel and a crew of 11, first encountered problems on Tuesday off the coast of Taichung, the coast guard said. The ship originated in China and was on its way to Taichung harbor. The ship was taking on water at the front and rear, but the captain said the problem was under control, so the crew didn't leave the ship immediately, the coast guard said. As the weather worsened late on Tuesday, the ship let in more water and capsized. Coast guard vessels rescued seven crew members, but four were still unaccounted for, the coast guard said.
■ Crime
Two nabbed in phone scam
Police have arrested two people suspected of using foreign laborers' personal information to obtain hundreds of cellphone numbers, the Criminal Investigation Bureau reported yesterday. Police were tipped off about one month ago that members of a crime ring often approach foreign laborers in their eateries or shops, claiming that they would help the laborers remit money home or apply for cellphones. Copies of documents commonly known as "foreign laborers' cards" were then collected from the foreign laborers to apply for cellphone numbers. In two separate raids in Changhua County and Taichung County on Sunday, police rounded up two suspects -- Lai Pei-yao, 24, and Kao Min-ho, 42, seizing more than 2,000 "foreign laborers' cards" and over 200 international phone cards. Local mobile phone operators offer various preferential rates and simplified application meas-urers to bearers of these cards.
■ Conservation
Second spoonbill treated
A black-faced spoonbill wintering in a wetland area in southern Taiwan found unable to stand, was captured and sent for immediate treatment, Tainan county officials said yesterday. Tainan County Animal Disease Prevention Center officials said it was the second of the rare birds to be brought in for treatment and initially thought that the bird might have been infected by microbes, but that its condition is not life-threatening. The officials said the first black-faced spoonbill was captured Tuesday morning and that the bird was recovering well following treatment. Each year, the endangered birds arrive at the wetlands located at the estuary of the Tsengwen River in Tainan County to spend the winter.
■ Human Rights
Dissidents petition Chen
Seventy Chinese dissidents have urged President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to free two Chinese pro-democracy activists who fled to the Taiwan to seek political asylum, a human rights watchdog said yesterday. Yan Peng (燕鵬), from Shandong Province, swam to Taiwan in June after he was jailed in China in 2001 for 18 months. Chen Rongli (陳榮利) swam to Taiwan in January after serving an eight-year prison term in China last year for attempting to establish a political party. "Detaining democracy activists who are fleeing persecution on the mainland is hardly consistent with the Chen Shui-bian government's professed emphasis on human rights," Liu Qing (劉青), president of the New York-based watchdog Human Rights in China, said in a statement.
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