■ ELECTIONS
Small parties to debate
Televised election debates among legislative candidates for nine minor political parties will be held tomorrow and Sunday, organizers said yesterday. Candidates for the Non-Partisan Solidarity Union, the Home Party, the Hakka Party, Green Party Taiwan, the Taiwan Farmers' Party, The Third Society Party, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, the Civic Party and the Taiwan Constitution Association will elaborate on their campaign platforms, answer questions from civic representatives and debate policies at two sessions scheduled to take place at the Public Television Service (PTS) studio in Taipei. The debates will begin at 5:30pm and end at 8pm and will be televised live by PTS. The legislative elections are on Jan. 12.
■ TRANSPORT
No licenses for tall buses
As of next month, buses higher than 3.5m will no longer be issued licenses, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday. It said that tall buses have a higher center of gravity and that this had led to safety concerns. Tall buses already licensed will be allowed to run for the duration of their lifespan but no new buses of that height will be registered. The maximum commercial lifespan for large buses here is eight years. The ministry said additional brake testing measures for buses will also begin next month.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Tainan sees gold in scraps
Kitchen waste in Tainan City is expected to generate NT$40 million in revenues for the city government over the next two years, officials with the city's Environmental Protection Bureau said yesterday. They said the biennial bidding for the rights to the kitchen scraps took place on Wednesday. A hog farmer in Rende Township (仁德), Tainan County, was the highest bidder with an offer of NT$2.6 per kilogram -- nearly five times as much as the previous winning bid two years ago. Competition was keen, with nine bidders this year compared to just three in 2005, they said. If the quantity of kitchen waste collected remains level, the new contract will net NT$40 million for the city, they said.
■ TRANSPORT
TRA resumes lunchbox sales
The Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) has begun offering passengers fried noodle lunchboxes, breaking from its tradition of rice-based lunches. The "A-Fu Chowmien" lunchboxes have mushrooms, shredded meat, onions, dried shrimp and other traditional ingredients and will be sold in the Taichung, Kaohsiung and Taipei stations. Only 200 boxes a day will be sold in each station and they will be available at 11am and then again at 4:30pm. The TRA had not been selling lunchboxes for almost a year because it could not find a qualified vendor. On Tuesday, the TRA awarded a new contract to Tseng A-fa (曾阿發), who won the bid by offering the agency an annual premium of NT$1.15 million. The lunchboxes would cost NT$50, Tseng said.
■ CONSUMER GOODS
Christmas wares targeted
Most Christmas products sold in Taipei stores contain fluorescent penetrant -- a whitening agent that may damage the health, the Consumers' Foundation said yesterday. Foundation chairman Cheng Jen-hung (程仁宏) said staffers conducted ultraviolet light tests on 21 Christmas products bought at random. Twenty of the samples showed a fluorescent reaction. Cheng urged the government to regulate the use of the penetrants.
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