■ EDUCATION
NCCU issues Chuang contract
National Chengchi University (NCCU) yesterday issued a temporary teaching contract to former Ministry of Education (MOE) secretary-general Chuang Kuo-jung (莊國榮) because of the university’s inability to convene an extraordinary meeting to review Chuang’s contract before the spring semester ended yesterday. NCCU president Wu Si-hua (吳思華) approved Chuang’s temporary contract and scheduled a meeting on Sept. 10 to decide whether to renew Chuang’s contract as assistant professor at the Department of Public Administration. The MOE on July 16 returned NCCU’s previous resolution not to renew Chuang’s contract because the article cited by the university in its decision was flawed as it would also bar Chuang from teaching in other universities. Chuang sparked controversy during the presidential election campaign in March when he used a profanity to imply that the late father of then Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had a salacious relationship with his goddaughter.
■ TOURISM
New ticket system planned
To save visitors to the Maokong Gondola from waiting in line for hours, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp is implementing a new ticketing system on weekends and holidays starting tomorrow. Visitors can draw number slips at Maokong’s Taipei Zoo Station and do not need to return to the station to take the gondola until the designated time printed on the slip, the company said. The gondola, a cable car system between Taipei Zoo and the tea-drinking center of Maokong (貓空) in the mountains, has become one of the most popular destinations in Taipei City since it was launched last year. The average wait time for visitors to get on the gondola is one to two hours during the weekends and holidays, the company said. The new measure would save visitors from having to wait in line, the company said.
■ POLITICS
Chen Chu denies report
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) dismissed a Chinese-language United Daily News report that said former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had recommended Democratic Progressive Party Deputy Secretary-General Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) to take over Deputy Kaohsiung Mayor Chiu Tai-san’s (邱太三) position after Chiu reportedly expressed his intention to resign. Shih Cheh (史哲), head of the city’s Department of Information, issued a press release for Chen Chu, who is currently leading a tourism delegation to Singapore. The press release said that the mayor had never received any direct or indirect suggestion from the former president regarding personnel recruitment. “The mayor always recruits the city government’s staff and places the interests of the city’s residents over other concerns,” the release said.
■ AGRICULTURE
Olympians to receive fruit
Air Macau will fly 10 tonnes of Taiwanese fruit free of charge to the Beijing Olympics for the athletes, reporters and sports officials, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported yesterday. Air Macau manager David Fei was quoted by CNA as saying that Air Macau began the shipments yesterday and would continue until the end of the Games. Four kinds of Taiwanese fruit — pineapple, star fruit, guava and mango — were chosen by the organizers as some of the fruit to be served to the athletes during the Games, which start next Friday.
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