Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) said yesterday that he is satisfied with what his Cabinet and the nation's law-enforcement officers have achieved this month, especially with regard to the capture of notorious kidnapper-for-ransom gangster Chang Hsi-ming (張錫銘).
"I am pretty satisfied with the statistics at hand. It demonstrates that the government was working hard to serve the public last month," Hsieh said.
The premier made the remarks during a press conference at the Baling Bridge, a newly completed bridge on Route 7 in the Lala Mountain tourist attraction in Fu-hsing Township (復興鄉), Taoyuan County.
The premier's visit to the tourist attraction yesterday morning was part of a celebration for the completion of the bridge and a promotion of locally grown peaches.
There, Hsieh decided to make public the "monthly review of government achievements" report during the press conference related to the celebration.
The premier was visibly pleased with the capture of Chang in Taichung on July 13, saying the arrest was a blow to lawlessness in the country.
Chang, one of Taiwan's most wanted fugitives, had managed to elude police dragnets on four separate occasions over the past few years. He was arrested after being shot at least twice in his left arm in a fierce gun-battle with police in his hideout in Taichung County. It was the second time the bandit had engaged in a gunbattle with police.
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