■INTERNET
IP addresses top 22 million
Statistics from the Taiwan Information Network Center showed that Internet Protocol (IP) addresses registered in the nation topped 22 million last year, an increase of 22.6 percent compared with 2007, the National Communications Commission said yesterday. The number was almost equal to the nation’s population, the commission said, adding that Taiwan was ranked fourth in Asia in this category, behind only China, Japan and South Korea. “The results show that the Internet and its infrastructure are widely available to people in Taiwan,” the commission said. Statistics also showed that more than 15 million people in Taiwan used the Internet last year, with the majority of them falling into the 12 to 35 age group.
■SOCIETY
Population hits 23 million
The nation’s population stood at 23,046,177 at the end of last month, an increase of 79,718 people compared with a year earlier, the Ministry of the Interior reported on Sunday. The ministry said that the number of registered households reached 7,657,870 at the end of last month, an increase of 1.85 percent, or 139,309 households, over the same period last year. Taipei County had the greatest number of households, totaling 1,340,934 households, or 17.51 percent of the national total. Trailing Taipei County was Taipei City, with 957,954 households, or 12.51 percent of the country’s total, the ministry said. The island county of Kinmen saw the highest rate of population growth over the past year, followed by Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County. The highest rate of decline came in Lienchiang County, which includes the island of Matsu, followed by Taitung County, the ministry said. A total of 13,469 babies were born last month, for an average of one birth every 3.3 minutes, while 9,689 people died, an average of one death every 4.6 minutes. A total of 15,166 couples tied the knot last month, while 3,064 couples divorced.
■POLITICS
KMT warns against split
The Taipei City chapter of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) warned yesterday that the pan-green camp could benefit if the pan-blue camp nominated two candidates for the legislative by-election in the city’s sixth district (Da-an, 大安). Hsu Wen-rong (徐文榮), deputy director of the chapter, urged KMT headquarters to negotiate the nomination with the New Party, which said it intended to compete for the seat. KMT Taipei City Councilor Chiang Nai-shin (蔣乃辛) won the party’s primary on Sunday and will run for the seat left vacant by former KMT legislator Diane Lee (李慶安). The KMT is scheduled to officially approve Chiang’s nomination during its Central Standing Committee meeting tomorrow.
■CRIME
German smuggler arrested
A German national was arrested on charges of smuggling 2.4kg of heroin into Taiwan from Thailand, police at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport said yesterday. Mario Schubat, 38, was arrested on Sunday night at the airport. He had traveled on a China Airlines flight from Bangkok. Customs officers said they found the 2.4kg of heroin powder in his luggage. “He refused to say who gave him the heroin and to whom he was delivering the heroin, and refused to be questioned at night. So we will question him during the day,” an airport police officer said over the telephone. Drug trafficking carries a possible death penalty.
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