■DIPLOMACY
Visa free entry extended
Holders of Holy See diplomatic and official passports as well as regular Vatican passport holders will be granted visa-free entry to Taiwan for short stays, with immediate effect, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The move is part of efforts to cement bilateral relations and promote exchanges, the ministry said. It said holders of Holy See diplomatic and official passports can enter Taiwan without visas for visits of up to 90 days, while for regular Vatican passport holders the maximum stay without a visa will be 30 days. The Vatican is the only European state that maintains formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Officials said the level of engagement between Taiwan and the Vatican has risen in frequency and importance. Vatican heavyweights, Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes and Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, have visited Taiwan this year, the officials said. The Pontifical Council convened the 2009 Spiritual Exercise for the Leaders of the Church’s Charitable Organization in Taipei earlier this month, bringing together 450 charity executives from 29 countries.
■CRIME
Police raid meth factory
Three men were arrested in Pingtung County in a recent raid by the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau on a factory manufacturing methamphetamine, the bureau said in a statement yesterday. The bureau’s Southern Mobile Unit seized 386kg of liquefied methamphetamine and equipment used to produce the drug during the raid, the statement said. Officers said the factory was in a building in an area between the townships of Linyuan (林園) and Jiadong (佳冬) badly hit by flooding after Typhoon Morakot. The men took advantage of the fact that the police were busy with rescue and recovery missions to expand production, officers said. The factory is one of the largest meth labs discovered in the south in recent years.
■HEALTH
Students hospitalized
Nearly 100 elementary school students in Taichung City and County remained hospitalized yesterday after falling ill on Friday with symptoms suggesting food poisoning, said Taichung City Public Health Bureau officials. Soon after eating lunch boxes provided by an outside contractor, students at Tanyang and Rueisuei elementary schools in Taichung County and Ssu Chang Li Elementary School in Taichung City were taken to hospital with fevers, bellyaches and diarrhea, officials said.
■POLITICS
Appointments proposed
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) proposed the appointment of deputies of several ministries to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for approval last night. Liang Chi-yuan (梁啟源), previously a research fellow at the Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica and recently appointed as member of the National Security Council, will become minister without portfolio of the Executive Yuan. Chu Chin-peng (朱景鵬), president of College of Humanities and Social Science of National Dong Hwa University, will become minister of the Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission; Lin Sheng-chung (林聖忠), incumbent administrative vice minister of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, will be promoted to political vice minister of the ministry. Two of the three political vice chairmen, Liu Te-hsun (劉德勳) and Mainland Affairs Council Chao Chien-min (趙建民), will stay in the same position, while Fu Dong-cheng (傅棟成) will leave.
NATIONAL SECURITY: Authorities are working to confirm the identities of the military personnel involved and investigating possible illegal conduct and regulatory violations Authorities are probing possible national security implications after Kinmen police and immigration officers on Sunday found a Chinese woman allegedly posing as a tourist while engaging in prostitution involving more than 10 military personnel. The woman, surnamed Chen (陳), has since been deported, authorities said, adding that investigators are still working to confirm the identities of those implicated, as the records only listed code names and aliases. The case stemmed from a report received by the Kinmen District Prosecutors’ Office on Friday last week from the Jinhu Precinct of the Kinmen County Police Bureau. On Sunday, police, along with the National Immigration
GLOBALGIVING: ‘ Caving to external pressure is not acceptable for an organization that has cultivated justice reform and human rights for 30 years,’ one NGO said A slew of non-government organizations (NGOs) have withdrawn from the GlobalGiving fundraising platform after it announced it would use “Chinese Taipei” instead of “Taiwan” from next month. The Taiwan Good Rice Association wrote on Facebook on Friday that it was informed on April 28 via a teleconference call of the change, which was made because the platform wanted to operate in China. Taiwan Good Rice is to terminate all cooperative relationships with GlobalGiving in response to the platform’s “unilateral and non-negotiable” decision to remove references to Taiwan, the NGO said. “Taiwan is in the official name of Taiwan Good Rice Association and the
HEAVY WEATHER: Typhoon Jangmi is due to crash straight into the Ryukyus as airlines look to shift flights to larger aircraft or cancel flights to Okinawa entirely Taiwan’s international air carriers announced flight adjustments over the weekend as Typhoon Jangmi is forecast to hit the Ryukyu Islands today and tomorrow. The Central Weather Administration (CWA) upgraded Jangmi from a tropical storm to a typhoon at 8am yesterday, with the eye located 580km south of Naha city. It was moving north at 19kph. Today, China Airlines’ CI-120, CI-121, CI-122 and CI-123 flights between Taoyuan and Naha, Okinawa, have been canceled as well as CI-132 and CI-133 between Kaohsiung and Naha. EVA Air’s BR-112, BR-113, BR-186 and BR-185 flights between Taoyuan and Naha are also canceled. Low-cost carrier Tigerair Taiwan canceled IT-230,
MULTIPRONGED APPROACH: China has sought to pressure Palau across a number of fronts, but the island nation has staunchly resisted overtures to ditch Taiwan Palau has been firm in backing Taiwan despite Chinese pressure that uses tourism economics, cyberattacks and criminal infiltration as tools to threaten the Pacific ally into renouncing its recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state. The Presidential Office yesterday announced that Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) would visit Palau from Saturday to Wednesday next week at the invitation of Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr. Whipps in April said in an interview that China had outspokenly asked Palau to “denounce Taiwan.” “And we have said: ‘We have no enemies, but nobody tells us who our friends are,’” he said. Whipps has told reporters multiple times
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