■SOCIETY
Dogs eat owner
Two pet dogs partly ate the body of their owner, whose corpse was discovered at his home nearly a month after he had died, a local report said yesterday. The dogs had eaten most of the unidentified 51-year-old’s right side by the time two police officers visited his home in Jhonghe (中和), Taipei County, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported. Along with the two dogs, which had blood-stained mouths and paws, the officers also found the deceased’s former wife, who appeared to have stayed with the man’s corpse for the entire period after his death, it said. Police made the discovery by chance when serving a summons on the woman to appear at the local prosecutor’s office for investigation on burglary charges. Police were still investigating the case but believe that the man died from liver disease. They were also looking into the possibility that his former wife, whom he divorced in 1995, was mentally ill.
■POLITICS
Government goes paperless
The government is expected to implement an online sign-off system in all government agencies at all levels nationwide by 2012 in a bid to reduce paper waste, Minister of the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission Chu Chin-peng (朱景鵬) said yesterday. “The system can save the country 90 million pieces of paper a year, or about 9,000 fully grown trees,” he said. “It can cut the time needed to process a document from an average of 3.41 days to 2.85 days and save the government several hundred million dollars in postage fees.” The government officials will have to process documents without paper except under special circumstances when handling confidential matters, he said. Some central government units started trial operation of the system two years ago.
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