■ Defense
Mobile launchers deployed
The military has begun to deploy mobile launcher trucks installed with fixed-base missiles around the country to counter Chinese weapons trained on the nation, the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) said yesterday.
The trucks carry locally made Hsiung Feng II anti-ship missiles -- which are difficult to detect by aerial reconnaissance -- the report said. The Ministry of National Defense declined
to comment on the report. Minister of National Defense Lee Jye (李傑) has said that China has at least 600 ballistic missiles facing Taiwan, and the number is likely to rise to 800 before the end of 2006. Last June the Cabinet approved a special budget of NT$610.8 billion (US$18.2 billion) to purchase sophisticated weaponry from Washington over a 15-year period scheduled to start this year. However, the budget has
yet to win the legislature's approval.
■ Transportation
CAL again faulted for crash
An inquiry into a 1999
China Airlines (CAL) crash at Hong Kong's airport has concluded pilot error was
to blame for the accident, a media report said yester-
day. The findings of the
long-running inquiry is with Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa (董建華) and a court hearing is expected soon, Hong Kong's Sunday Morning Post reported, citing sources close to the inquiry. The probe into the crash of CAL flight CI642 came to the same conclusion as an earlier inquiry by the territory's Civil Aviation Department (CAD). The carrier disputed the earlier inquiry and the Sunday Morning Post report cited sources saying it was likely to seek an unprecedented judicial review of this latest inquiry. Three people died when the MD11 jet on a
flight from Bangkok went into a tailspin after a wing-
tip hit the runway as it
tried to land at Hong Kong's then year-old airport during
a typhoon on Aug. 22, 1999. The airline blamed wind shear for throwing the
plane sideways, but the
CAD inquiry the following November said that pilot Gerrardo Lettich hadn't slowed the plane sufficiently to execute a safe landing.
■ Charity
Fundraising a success
The campaign to raise funds to sponsor 10,000 children affected by the Dec. 26 tsunami in South and Southeast Asia has been a big success, Government Information Office (GIO) Director-General Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. "As of Sunday, more than NT$400 million [US$12.5 million] in cash has been raised," Lin said. The GIO launched the fundraising campaign, titled "The Day after Tomorrow, 10,000 Hopes" two weeks ago
with the aim of sponsoring 10,000 tsunami-affected children for one year. The campaign came to a finale
at a party Saturday evening,where many celebrities donated personal effects to be auctioned off to raise money. Lin said the fundraising campaign had come to a successful end, with donations exceeding the original target of
NT$360 million. Lin said
the GIO would join with the news media in forming a trust fund to manage the money and ensure that
the donations are used correctly and wisely. According to the GIO's
plan, Lin said local non-governmental organizations will be commissioned to
plan how to use the funds. The donations would be taken to Indonesia and Sri Lanka after the Lunar New Year holiday, Lin said, adding that formal donation ceremonies will be held in those two countries.
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