■ CRIME
Teen arrested in drugs probe
Police arrested a 19-year-old senior high school student implicated in the smuggling of more than 6kg of marijuana into the country, Taipei County authorities said on Friday. The aviation police discovered the marijuana in items registered as snow boots shipped from Canada at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. Following the delivery of the drugs to Taipei County, the police arrested the student, identified only by his last name, Wang, when he went to pick up the package. Wang told police that he was paid NT$50,000 (US$1,550) to handle the pick-up for a man nicknamed "Ah Kuang," and that he did not know the shipment contained marijuana.
■ ENERGY
Wind-power subsidiary opens
Leading wind-power firm Vestas Wind Systems A/S of Denmark opened a subsidiary company in Taiwan on Thursday, saying the nation was an "ideal place" to develop the alternative energy source. "Taiwan relies on imports for its energy needs, has environmental concerns and has a shallow seashore on its west coast, so it is an ideal place to develop wind power," said Thorbjorn Rasmussen, president of Vestas Asia Pacific. Taiwan has great potential for this "modern energy" as it is hoping to install 2,000 megawatts in wind-power projects by 2010, he said. "The purpose of launching Vestas Taiwan Ltd as a subsidiary is to further develop a local organization, including a larger after-sales and service department, for maintaining turbines in Taiwan," Rasmussen said.
■ AGRICULTURE
Premier urges tea protection
Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) yesterday urged tea farmers not to let the nation's top-quality tea sprouts and tea producing technology flow overseas in order to protect Taiwan's competitive advantage in the industry. Chang made the comments while presenting awards at a ceremony in Taichung County on the opening day of a tea culture festival. The festival is being sponsored by the Taichung Tea Commercial Association with the aim of promoting the county's tea produce. Chang said the nation produced a total of 19,000 tonnes of tea last year, with a production value of NT$4.35 billion (US$135 million). He expressed hope that the nation's tea industry would develop based on the principles of "quality, sanitation and safety" in line with government policies to promote food safety in the agricultural sector. He urged domestic tea farmers to work to produce a wider variety of top quality teas in order to help "Taiwan tea become the best in the world."
■ AGRICULTURE
Fair promotes local produce
A traveling fair featuring fruits and other agricultural products is being held at a number of supermarkets in Indonesia, introducing Taiwanese produce to the southeast Asian nation's upper middle class and Chinese-speaking groups, a spokesman for the event's organizers said yesterday. The fair runs through Feb. 19, the spokesman said. The exhibition displays a wide range of foods, including fresh fruits, organic produce and processed food. Fruits such as Ponkan mandarin oranges, bell fruits, grapes, pineapples and persimmons have been included in the fair, the spokesman said. The event marks the beginning of the government's plan to promote agricultural produce in ten potentially lucrative markets, the spokesman said. The other nine countries targeted by the government are Japan, South Korea, India, Russia, Brazil, Malaysia, Turkey, Vietnam and Spain.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
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