■ CRIME
Fugitive couple return
A fugitive couple wanted by the authorities were brought back from Japan to Taiwan yesterday evening, Taiwan's representative office in Japan said. Officials from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Japan were referring to Chao Ching (趙晴), 51, and her husband, Tang Feng (譚鋒), 46. The two are wanted for their suspected involvement in swindling numerous people out of a total of NT$15 million (US$447,760). They are wanted by the Kaohsiung District Court on charges of fraud filed in 1994. The officials said Japanese immigration officials notified them on Nov. 22 that the couple had arrived at Narita International Airport from Los Angeles using Taiwanese passports, which were later found to be forged, and were scheduled to fly to Seoul the following day. They contacted Japanese authorities and obtained their consent to deport the couple and leave them at the disposal of the representative office.
■ SOCIETY
Domestic violence targeted
The Taiwan Alliance Against Domestic Violence joined forces with several legislators yesterday to call for an increase in the budget related to domestic violence issues. Since the Domestic Violence Law (家暴法) was passed, the government has not increased funds for tackling domestic violence, the alliance said. The alliance suggested that an amount of NT$3 billion (US$89.27 million) for a period of 10 years -- NT$300 million per year -- be set aside to be used for causes such as the training of social workers who would deal directly with problems related to domestic violence. Currently the funds put forth for dealing with domestic violence amount to NT$145 million, a mere 2 percent of the social-welfare budget.
■ SOCIETY
More born out of wedlock
The rate of children born out of wedlock has surpassed 4 percent for the first time, according to statistics released by the Ministry of the Interior. The figures show that based on household registry records, 6,832 such children were born in the first 10 months of the year, accounting for 4.04 percent of all births in the period and representing a 0.63 percent rise from the same period last year. Hualien County ranked first with 11 percent of births out of wedlock, followed by Taitung County with 10.4 percent and Keelung with 5.8 percent. The ministry did not provide any reason for the rise. Altogether there were 169,040 births during the first 10 months of the year, down 3.8 percent from the same period last year.
■ MEDIA
Chinese students to visit
Graduate students from China majoring in mass communications will be able to join local news media organizations as interns next year, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. MAC Vice Chairman Huang Wei-feng (黃偉峰) said a foundation set up by the council to promote cross-strait civilian exchanges has worked out a pilot plan, while a real-estate tycoon has promised to donate NT$1 million (US$29,8800). He said the foundation will subsidize the mass communications departments of Shih Hsin University and Ming Chuan University to handle the project. Initially, between four and 10 graduate students from each Chinese university will be able to come to Taiwan. Huang said the internships will not involve course credits. The aim is to help the students learn about Taiwan's news environment first-hand and to promote cross-strait exchanges and understanding, he added.
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