■ POLITICS
Vote-buying alleged
Eleven council representatives in Guangfu Township (光復), Hualien, were questioned by Hualien prosecutors about vote-buying allegations. Guangfu Township Council yesterday morning held council chairperson and vice chairperson elections, which were won by Lin Tai-hsu (林泰旭) and Wan Jung-tsai (萬榮財), both Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members, respectively. As soon as it was announced that Lin and Wan had been elected, prosecutors, military police and agents from the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau appeared in the council. chairman Hualien prosecutor Hsu Chien-jung (?a) said Lin was suspected of paying some representatives NT$500,000 each in return for their votes, while Wan was suspected of paying NT$300,000 for a vote. The summons were on-going as of press time.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Paper certificates return
The Sindian Land Office in Taipei County will resume issuing paper certificates of title from today based on environmental considerations, office chief Chuang Yue-kuei (莊月桂) said yesterday. The office will stop issuing plastic certificates, although plastic certificates will remain valid and holders will not be asked to replace them with paper ones, Chuang said. In light of the fact that waste plastic certificates generate toxic gases and harm the environment when they are incinerated, the county government decided to stop issuing plastic ones and to reintroduce paper versions, Chuang said.
■ RETAIL
Web sites to offer MIT goods
Certified made-in-Taiwan (MIT) products will soon be available on Taiwan’s three main online shopping Web sites, an Industrial Development Bureau official said yesterday. The bureau is in discussions with three major online shopping operators, including Yahoo-Kimo and PChome, and if the talks are successful, consumers will be able to purchase MIT-labeled items on their Web sites in October at the earliest, the official said. The bureau is promoting an MIT label and an MIT quality verification system aimed at helping domestic industries to promote their products, the official said. Last month, 14 major chain stores nationwide agreed to promote certified MIT products by stocking the products in their 10,000 stores from October.
■ CULTURE
Puppets donated to Canada
The Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA) will donate four hand puppets to the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia today, a council official said yesterday. “The puppets illustrate the development of Taiwanese puppet shows,” the official said, adding that a presentation ceremony in Canada will be held, followed by a performance of A Sea of Puppets by the Taiyuan Puppet Theater in Taipei, directed by Robin Ruizendaal, which has been performed in more than 30 countries. The museum is world-renowned for its collections, research, public programs and teaching. “Taiwan’s first lady Chow Mei-ching [周美青] visited the museum with CCA Minister Emile Sheng (盛治仁) in February and saw many antique puppets in the museum collection, which inspired them with the idea of donating modern puppets to the museum,” the official said. The four puppets are the Scholar Warrior Shih Yan-wen, Hidden Mirror Man and the Pili series’ main characters Su Huan-jen and Yu Qing-huan. Among them, the scholar warrior Shih has longest history.
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