■ POLITICS
First lady leaves hospital
First lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) left the hospital yesterday after spending two days in treatment for cold symptoms, the Presidential Office confirmed yesterday. Wu was hospitalized at 6:10pm on Saturday after a cold developed into a minor lung inflammation. At the time of her admission, Wu had been running a high fever for four days. At its peak, Wu's temperature reached 39.2oC, but after treatment it came down to about 38oC, according to Wu's medical team. The wheelchair-bound Wu was paralyzed from the waist down after she was hit by a van in 1984.
■ MEDICINE
DOH donates equipment
More than 19 countries have received donated medical equipment from the Department of Health's Global Medical Instrument Support and Service program, the department said in a release yesterday. The program collects donations of used medical equipment -- including incubators for newborns, X-ray machines and even ambulances -- from hospitals and medical centers to send to countries friendly to Taiwan that are in need of the equipment. The price of the equipment that been donated since the program began in 2005 would come to more than NT$50 million (US$1.6 million) if it were purchased new, the release said. Countries that have benefitted from the program include Mongolia, Haiti, the Honduras, Nicaragua and Nigeria.
■ EDUCATION
Tu touts `piggybank'
People can help less advantaged students by donating money to a special account set up by the Ministry of Education and individual schools, Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) said yesterday. Tu urged the public to do all they could to ensure all school-aged children in the country receive an adequate education. So far, 214 schools have participated in the program and the MOE has also set aside NT$200 million (US$6.1 million) to help the schools start accumulating money. Two private foundations have donated NT$1 million each, Tu said. He said the idea of the nation-wide piggybank project is to allow each school to have their own account into which the public can donate money for financially disadvantaged students. All transactions will be transparent, he said. For more information, visit www.edusave.edu.tw.
■ MILITARY
Mortar kills soldier
A private died and a lieutenant was injured in an explosion at a Logistics Command Headquarters base in Taichung County yesterday. "Private Wang Chao-hsin (王照鑫) died at the scene. Lieutenant Lin Chien-hung's (林建宏) ears and eyes were injured but his condition is stable," read a news release from the command's headquarters. The release said that Wang and Lin were trying to defuse a mortar at around 10:35am yesterday when the mortar was accidentally triggered and exploded. Military prosecutors were investigating the accident, it said. The Ministry of National Defense did not make any comment on the incident as of press time yesterday, but Logistics Command Headquarters' Commander General Chin Nai-chieh (金乃傑) and spokesman Major General Wong Cheng-yin (翁承蔭) immediately notified the families of the soldiers and asked the base to temporarily stop defusing mortars until the investigation into the incident is complete, the release said.
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