■ POLITICS
Legislature to review budget
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) vowed yesterday that the legislature would carry out its gate-keeping duty when reviewing the government’s special budget request of NT$150.6 billion (US$4.4 billion). Wang told reporters that he believed lawmakers would strictly review the Cabinet’s budget proposal instead of cutting it a great deal of slack, adding the legislature would also communicate with the Cabinet about any unreasonable budget requests. Wang made the remarks after lawmakers across party lines raised questions about details of the budget request. The budget request to increase investment in public construction projects was submitted to the legislature on Monday. The Procedure Committee on Tuesday agreed to prioritize the proposal in tomorrow’s plenary session — the first plenary meeting of the spring legislative session. Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) is expected to brief the legislature tomorrow on administrative achievements in the second half of last year and take questions concerning the special budget request on Tuesday.
■ DIPLOMACY
Taiwan vows to help Tuvalu
The government promised yesterday to help residents of Tuvalu before the island chain is wiped off the map under a rising South Pacific. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) told visiting Tuvalu Prime Minister Apisai Ielemia that his government wanted to work more closely with the archipelago where the highest point is just 5m above sea level. Tuvalu, covering 26km2 over nine coral reefs, faces inundation as global warming pushes up sea levels. Leaders in the archipelago have sought an eventual haven for their 12,000 citizens as the sea level rises. “We’re an ally, so we will exhaust all options to save it,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) said. “I think we’ll be working as hard as possible to help Tuvalu’s citizens.”
■ TOURISM
Cherry blossoms in bloom
The Taipei City Government said visitors to this year’s Yangmingshan National Park flower festival, which opens tomorrow and lasts until March 22, will be treated to spectacular cherry blossoms. Officials from the city’s Parks and Street Lights Office said that cherry trees on Yangmingshan are in full bloom and the red of their blossoms is the richest in years thanks to the big gap in temperatures from day to night. Details on the festival and traffic information are available in Chinese at the Web site http://2009yms.com.tw/page0.html.
■ RESEARCH
History resources go online
Researchers interested in history and philology can now register with the Academia Sinica’s online database to enjoy free access to the 16 digital archives compiled by Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology (IHP). To provide high quality and accessible research materials to sinologists, the IHP began digitizing its collection of antique books, documents and artifacts in the mid-1980s, Academia Sinica said. The collection has been visited about 5,000 times a day by affiliated researchers alone. The collections — including Scripta Sinica, the Database of Bronze Rubbings, the Database of Oracle Rubbings, Grand Secretariat Archives and Ming and Qing Dynasty Biographical information — will now be open to everyone, Academia Sinica said. To apply for online access, log onto http://applyonline.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/. An explanatory meeting will be held at the IHP tomorrow from 9am to 3:30pm.
■AGRICULTURE
Tainan goes organic
Tainan County began work on a special zone for organic farming yesterday, hoping to develop it into a model for similar zones around the country and a tourist attraction. Completion of the special organic zone is scheduled for August and more than 20 farmers have already begun cultivating rice, raspberries, pomelos, pumpkins, eggplants and sweet potatoes in the compound, county officials said. The special organic farm is located on a 40-hectare plot of land that the county government leased from the state-run Taiwan Sugar Co, county officials said. Under the county’s program, the land is being rented to farmers at NT$50,000 per hectare per year, the officials said. A 1,000m² sales and exhibition center will also be opened to sell produce from the zone.
■SPORTS
Taiwanese scoop 30 medals
Taiwan won a total of 30 medals — six golds, 12 silvers and 12 bronzes — in the week-long 2009 Special Olympics World Winter Games that concluded recently in the US. The 36 young athletes with intellectual disabilities that represented Taiwan won medals in all four events in which they participated — speed skating, figure skating, snowshoeing and floor hockey, the Sports Affairs Council (SAC) said. US Vice President Joe Biden attended the Idaho games and presented awards to the Taiwanese medalist in the figure skating event the council said. A photograph of the presentation made the front page of the biggest local newspaper, the Boise Statesman, that day, the SAC said. Taiwan won 20 gold medals, 13 silvers and 10 bronzes in the 2005 Special Olympics in the Japanese city of Nagano, the SAC said.
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