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Taiwan News Quick Take

A seamstress holds a bag made from a legislative election campaign flag in Taipei County yesterday. The Taipei County Government has collected all campaign flags and made them into bags and cooking aprons for the public in an effort to recycle materials. PHOTO: NICKY LOH, REUTERS

■ SOCIETY

County to fine explicit ads

A Taipei County Government task force formed a week ago met yesterday to draft strategies to rid the county's streets of sexually explicit billboards and ads. Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) told the task force that any shop found violating the regulations governing billboards and advertisements would be given a warning and 10 days to address the problem, adding that noncompliance would lead to a fine of NT$40,000. The task force said that many streets in the county were teeming with motels, adult video stores, porn shops and betel nut stands that use sexually explicit or suggestive billboards and other forms of advertisements, such as scantily clad women, to promote their products and services.



■ EDUCATION

Read at home project

The Department of Elementary Education will launch a project to encourage parents to read at home with their children as part of a broader effort to expand local education outreach programs, department director Pan Wen-Chung (潘文忠) said yesterday. Pan said the project was part of the ministry's five-year, NT$1.38 billion (US$42.6 million) plan set up last year to upgrade equipment and purchase more books for school libraries in elementary and junior high schools in remote areas around the country. Pan said that beginning this year, the Ministry of Education would select counties and cities and schools at different levels that had successfully integrated teachers, parents and communities to serve as models for other localities. The ministry will choose 120 schools that have excelled in carrying out the reading project, Pan said at a seminar in Kaohsiung on Monday. The project will include training 20 parent groups and 1,000 seed teachers to promote reading in their communities, Pan said.



■ CRIME

ARATS' help requested

The Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said on Monday it had requested help from its Chinese counterpart to find movie director Liu Jia-chang (劉家昌) and his wife, both wanted by the Taipei District Court on charges of breach of trust. An SEF spokesman said the foundation had written a letter to the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) stating that Liu and his wife, Chang Chia-chen (章家珍), have been on the wanted list since May last year, and immigration records showed they left Taiwan for Hong Kong in 2001, with their current whereabouts unknown. The SEF asked for ARATS' help in finding whether the couple were hiding in China, and if found, to have them repatriated in accordance with the Kinmen Agreement signed in 1990.



■ CRIME

Drug smugglers arrested

The Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB) seized 232kg of contraband hydroxylimine hydrochloride (HCL) -- a raw ingredient used in the production of ketamine -- in Kaohsiung, a bureau official said yesterday. Three suspects were arrested on charges of smuggling the ingredient -- a class four drug, the official said. MJIB agents proceeded with follow-up investigations after discovering nine ketamine plants and uncovered a total of 82kg of hydroxylimine HCL in Taipei City, Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and Changhua County on Jan. 9. The MJIB discovered another 150kg of hydroxylimine HCL in Kaohsiung City on Monday, in cooperation with the Kaohsiung Customs Office, the official said.
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