■ Society
Man sets himself on fire
A man immolated himself in front of the Presidential Office yesterday, but was said to be in stable condition after being rushed to the hospital, according to the Public Affairs Department of the Presidential Office. It is not known why the man wanted to kill himself, but he reportedly told police that his bride from China had cheated him out of some NT$400,000 (US$12,000). A spokesman for the department said that around 3:25pm, the man, 34, surnamed Wang, poured a bottle of gasoline over himself on a sidewalk beside a parking lot of the Presidential Office and turned himself into a human torch. Fortunately, military police guarding the Presidential Office heard his shrieks of pain and rushed to the scene with fire extinguishers. They put out the fire and called an ambulance that took him to nearby Taiwan University Hospital. Police are investigating the incident.
■ Health
Nation worried about bird flu
Eighty-six percent of Taiwanese worry about the nation being affected by bird flu, according to a survey on cross-strait relations released yesterday by the Mainland Affairs Council. Respondents also said that the government should set stricter regulations on cross-strait interactions to prevent an epidemic. Meanwhile, 53.1 percent believe that China would prevent Taiwan from being assisted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other countries if bird flu spreads to Taiwan. In addition, 54.9 percent agree that cross-strait negotiations should be handled by the government. About 60 percent think stricter regulations on investments in China are necessary. On the issue of unification or independence, 82.1 percent of respondents prefer the status quo and 78.3 percent dislike Beijing's "one county, two systems" policy. The survey was carried out from Nov. 25 to Nov. 27 through phone interviews with 1,102 residents older than 20.
■ Politics
DPP vows to reform pensions
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus yesterday vowed to enact a law to regulate the pension program for civil servants. It also requested that those who included the years they worked at the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) as part of their time in the civil service return any income that they acquired improperly. DPP caucus whip William Lai (賴清德) said that many KMT members count the time they served at 11 different KMT-affiliated organizations toward the time they serve in the civil sector, entitling them to handsome retirement pensions. Such officials include former Judicial Yuan president Lin Yang-kang (林洋港), who counted two years and four months of party service into his civil service, Lai said.
■ Labor Affairs
Migrant labor bosses polled
The Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) has started conducting telephone interviews with employers of 130,000 foreign laborers, CLA officials said yesterday. In view of the fact that some employers of foreign laborers might have inadvertently violated the law due to their unfamiliarity with regulations, officials from the CLA's Department of Employment and Vocational Training Administration said they have decided to conduct the interviews with the aim of providing employers with the latest information regarding laws on hiring foreign laborers. They have commissioned Trendgo, a polling company, to conduct the interviews through Dec. 18, the officials said. Employers are urged to check the Web site www.evta.gov.tw or call 02-27791155.
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