ENTERTAINMENT
Microsoft to offer TV service
Microsoft Corp yesterday announced its first TV service in Taiwan, as the world’s largest software company sought to break into the local TV market in cooperation with a cable operator. The on-demand service, which at present is only available to subscribers of cable operator Vee TIME in Taichung city and county, allows users to watch or access TV programs on various Internet-connected devices, including televisions with set-top boxes, computers and smartphones running the Windows operating system. “Cable subscribers have felt it inconvenient that they cannot organize favorite programs or pay by the number of channels they use. We have solved these problems by using Microsoft’s media platform Mediaroom,” Vee TIME chairman Richard Lai (賴富源) said. The service was expected to help increase the company’s number of subscribers from 780,000 this year to 1.5 million by next year, he said.
ENVIRONMENT
Government promotes green
Taiwan is working to foster an environment that will encourage private companies and local residents to develop green industries and combat global warming and resource degradation, Environmental Protection Administration Minister Stephen Shen (沈世宏) said. The centerpiece of the government’s plan, Shen said, was to promote the birth of 50 low-carbon communities around Taiwan over the next two years, six low-carbon cities within five years and four low-carbon living regions with 10 years. To achieve these goals, the government will push companies and banks devoted to ecological conservation to open offices in “low-carbon special zones,” in which electric vehicles will serve as the main means of transport, Shen said, adding that the government also planned to make the agricultural sector more environmentally friendly and turn incinerators into biomass energy production centers.
HEALTH
New dengue case in north
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has announced a new case of dengue fever in Taipei County and put the north of the country on alert. A 72-year-old man from Wugu Township (五股) this week became the third confirmed case of indigenous dengue fever in Taipei County this year. CDC deputy director Lin Ting (林頂) said that many more cases might come to light. The elderly patient had not visited the south nor been abroad, but lives close to two patients who were infected with dengue fever after returning from a trip to Cambodia in August. “We have reason to believe that this is the result of a cluster infection and suspect that the elderly patient is not the only indigenous dengue patient living in Wugu,” Lin said. The Department of Health has set up a dengue screening station to provide free blood tests, with Lin warning people in the north not to lower their guard regarding possible infection.
CRIME
Former prosecutor sentenced
The Taiwan High Court’s Kaohsiung branch yesterday sentenced a former prosecutor to seven years, six months in prison on counts of corruption, rape, forced obscene acts and obstruction of personal freedom. Wu Chieh-jen (吳傑人), who worked out of the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office, was found guilty of committing the crimes against more than 10 women who were targets of his investigations between 1999 and 2006, the court said. According to the ruling, Wu used his influence as a prosecutor to coerce the women to have sex with him.
CULTURE
Taiwanese wins film award
Let’s Be Friends!, directed by Taiwanese filmmaker Wang Chun-chiang (王君強), won a Certificate of Honorable Mention at the 58th annual Columbus International Film and Video Festival in Columbus, Ohio, Taiwan’s liaison office in Chicago said yesterday. The documentary displays Taiwanese people’s passion and friendliness and the depth of Chinese culture preserved in Taiwan, the office said. It is hoped the film will encourage foreigners to study Chinese in Taiwan, the office added. Established in 1952 to encourage the use of film and video in all forms of education and communication, the event is one of the oldest film festivals in North America.
DIPLOMACY
Brothers held in Tanzania
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday night confirmed that two Taiwanese brothers surnamed Hsu (許) have been detained in Tanzania for over a year. The ministry said it has been monitoring the situation closely. Ministry spokesman James Chang (章計平) said the older brother was the captain of an Oman-registered fishing boat, Tawariq 1. The elder brother, along with a crew of 30-plus, was detained by Tanzania on March 8 last year for fishing illegally and holding an expired fishing license, Chang said. The captain’s younger brother, who operated a boat based in Kenya, was also detained when he went to Tanzania to try and rescue his elder brother. Chang said the matter was brought to the ministry’s attention on Oct. 25 last year and the country’s representative offices in South Africa and Oman have been closely watching the situation and providing assistance. Chang said the ship owner has hired lawyers to oversee the legal process and that the Omani government was also involved as the boat was registered in that country.
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