■POLITICS
Gift raises eyebrows
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ho Tsai-feng (侯彩鳳) caused a controversy after the Apple Daily reported that she gave about 10 KMT lawmakers Chinese-made cellphones as presents. The move prompted speculation that she might be eyeing a seat on the KMT Central Standing Committee. The Chinese-language newspaper reported on Saturday that “a certain rich KMT legislator” had given colleagues phones valued at NT$3,000 as gifts for the Dragon Boat Festival. KMT Legislator Chang Sho-wen (張碩文) said he had received a phone from Ho, but the present had nothing to do with the upcoming committee election. KMT Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾), who also received a phone, said Ho couldn’t use the phones to win support for the election. Ho said the phones had nothing to do with the election. “I gave this present to my good friends because it would be very useful for elected representatives,” she said.
■ENVIRONMENT
Exposure leads to ban
A man who stripped while climbing Yushan (玉山) last week has been banned from the mountain and his case was sent to prosecutors because he had “ruined the scenery,” national park officials said. A friend took photos of a 30-year-old man, surnamed Lu (呂), posing naked on the 3,952m peak on Tuesday and posted them online, the officials said. The man has been barred from Yushan for one to three years and could face charges. “I think he was just goofing around,” a Yushan National Park Administration official said. “He said it was just for fun. But Taiwanese are conservative, and Yushan is our sacred peak.”
■CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Man arrested for threat
A Taiwanese man was arrested for threatening to attack a group of Chinese gymnasts visiting under a sports exchange program, Chinese-language media reported yesterday. The man, surnamed Liao (廖), was arrested in Taoyuan on Saturday after he reportedly made a phone call to a Taoyuan police station on Wednesday threatening to attack the gymnasts. Liao reportedly told police that he was a member of the Taiwan Independence Alliance and was angry that gymnasts were performing that evening at the Taoyuan Arena, so he was going to shoot them with a crossbow, media reports said. On hundred extra officers were sent to the arena and the exhibition went off smoothly. Police traced the call to a public telephone in Taipei, took fingerprints and arrested Liao on Saturday. During questioning, Liao, 45, reportedly told police he favored independence, and was angered by billboard ads for the gymnastic event. He said he made the threat to express his anger at China and because he was drunk. Police turned him over to prosecutors on charges of disturbing social order.
■WEATHER
Rain forecast for this week
Although the plum rains may have hit a record low this year, a front will begin to affect the country tomorrow, possibly bringing regional thunderstorms, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. Intermittent rains were predicted for today in the north and northeast, as well as mountainous areas in the center and south and the front was expected to bring thunderstorms to the entire island on Wednesday. Intermittent rain and thunderstorms will affect the entire country until Saturday, when the front will move southward. Light rain is expected in the south and east from Saturday, cloudy skies elsewhere, the bureau 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