■ MEDIA
"SET-TV pair indicted
SET-TV news editor-in-chief Chen Ya-lin (陳雅琳) and a reporter were indicted yesterday on suspicion of misusing archive footage in a series of special reports on major historical protests. Prosecutors said the pair were charged with violating the Copyright Law (著作權) for misusing a documentary on farmers' protests by Lee Chun-fa (李春發). The indictment follows the failure of the TV station and Lee to settle the case out of court. SET-TV and Chen Ya-lin were also accused last year of misusing other footage in special reports on the 228 Incident that were broadcast last March. Juan Mei-shu (阮美姝), the daughter of a 228 Incident victim provided the footage that SET-TV was accused of misusing. The station apologized for failing to clarify the source of the video clips, thereby misleading viewers into believing the clips were from the incident.
■ POLITICS
Chiang in-law cuts KMT jobs
Chiang Fang Chih-yi (蔣方智怡), a daughter-in-law of former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), resigned her post in the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) Central Standing Committee yesterday after her son criticized former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰). She also resigned as a member of the Huang Fu-hsing (黃復興) branch during yesterday's Central Standing Committee meeting. She apologized to committee members and left after offering her resignation. Demos Chiang (蔣友柏) said in his blog on Sunday that Lien had harmed democracy in Taiwan by refusing to concede defeat after the 2004 presidential election and demanding the election be annulled. On Tuesday, Chiang Fang apologized for her son's criticism. KMT Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) said the party would try to persuade her to stay on the committee.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Tree planting drive launched
The Council of Agriculture has renewed its drive to promote the planting of trees as part of the nation's efforts to be a responsible member of the global village. The idea is to encourage every citizen to plant at least one tree in his or her lifetime, senior officials said yesterday. The "One Life, One Tree, for a Motherland of Green" campaign will use 12 kinds of trees corresponding to the 12 signs of the zodiac in the hopes that people will plant a tree corresponding to their zodiac sign on their birthday. The council wanted to persuade at least half of the population to plant their own trees within five years. Council of Agriculture Minister Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) estimated that if all 23 million Taiwanese follow the call, it will raise the nation's forest coverage by 59.09 percent, reducing carbon emissions, producing oxygen and retaining water that could be worth billions of dollars.
■ CULTURE
Taichung arts festival set
Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) yesterday invited art lovers from around the country to visit the Taichung Traditional Arts festival, which opens tomorrow and runs through Feb. 24. The festival will feature plays, operas and folk art activities, as well as an arts market, Taichung City's Cultural Affairs Bureau said. More than a dozen drama troupes from around the country will take part. Bureau officials said one highlight of the festival will be an attempt on Saturday to stage the biggest-ever erhu performance. More than 200 people have already signed up to perform, the officials said, adding they may seek to set a Guinness world record for the most people performing on the two-stringed Chinese instrument at one time.
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,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching