CRIME
Former MIB chief impeached
The Control Yuan yesterday impeached former Military Intelligence Bureau director-general Ke Guang-ming (葛廣明) for allegedly embezzling NT$3.7 million (US$127,498) in 2008. The Control Yuan voted 12 to 1, passing a proposal initiated by Control Yuan members Yu Teng-fang (余騰芳) and Lee Ping-nan (李炳南) to impeach Ke. The Control Yuan later referred Ke to the Public Functionary Disciplinary Sanction Commission for discipline. On Aug. 17 last year, Ke was sentenced to 14 years in prison by a military court in the first trial of the case. Ke’s secretary, Tien Chia-tung (田家棟), was sentenced to two years and six months in prison for allegedly assisting him in the crime. Ke was accused of putting the funds in his personal safe and taking NT$450,000 for personal use.
ECONOMY
Kinmen Kaoliang posts record
A Kinmen County -Government-run liquor company reported record sales last year and vowed to expand its capacity. Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor Inc posted revenues of more than NT$12.3 billion (US$424 million) last year, of which NT$431 million originated in Xiamen, China, according to Yao Song-ling (姚松齡), managing director of the 59-year-old company. The company accounts for a substantial part of the annual revenue of Kinmen County. It contributed NT$4.9 billion to the county’s coffers last year on the back of strong sales, NT$700 million more than in 2009 and 22.5 percent more than projected in the company’s annual budget. The company also paid NT$2.88 billion in liquor tax to the central government, Yao said. Faced with competition from Chinese products, the company said it planned to raise annual production from 2.5 billion liters to between 4 billion and 4.2 billion liters within three years.
DIPLOMACY
More active WTO role sought
Taiwan will seek to play a more active role in the WTO this year, Taiwan’s WTO representative was quoted as saying in a recent interview with the WTO center of the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER), a Taipei-based think tank. In the interview, Lin Yi-fu (林義夫) said Taiwan intended to actively participate in multilateral trade negotiations and various committees under the WTO, adding that Taiwan’s delegation would seek to chair committees to boost its active participation this year. Taiwan will also seek to play more of a leading role in several negotiating groups it has joined, such as Recently Acceded Members (RAMs) — countries that negotiated and joined the WTO after 1995 — and Friends of A-D Negotiations (FANs), a coalition of countries lobbying for agriculture to be treated as a diverse and special case because of non-trade concerns, Lin was quoted as saying. He also said Taiwan should try to solve trade disputes through the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism more often.
SOCIETY
New Taipei plans food banks
The New Taipei City (新北市) Government said it would soon establish food and daily necessity banks around the city to help tide disadvantaged people and families over the current cold weather. New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) said the city government would set up the commodity banks in 10 social welfare centers around the city prior to this year’s Lunar New Year, which falls on Feb. 3. Chu said the city government would foot the bill for the food and daily necessities to be provided by the banks. He also called on the public to make donations.
Staff Writer, with CNA
LITERATURE
ALS sufferer wins first prize
A woman suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) won first prize in a literature competition held at the Taipei International Flora Exposition on Sunday, for comparing her life to the short-lived, but glamorous night-blooming cereus, or moon flower. Lin Yueh-ku (林月姑), who has been suffering from ALS — known as Lou Gehrig’s disease — for 13 years. She used her middle finger to click a mouse and compose the 2,000-word piece titled Life of the Night-Blooming Cereus — the Transient Beauty, that stood out among the 201 submitted works. Able to type only 50 words per hour, the 54-year-old spent a month depicting scenes from her life.
ENTERTAINMENT
Chou enjoys US ‘vacation’
For pop singer Jay Chou (周杰倫), star of the smash hit The Green Hornet, Tinseltown offers a welcome break from the paparazzi in Asia. “As an artist, I need a lot of space, which I cannot really get in many places in Asia,” Chou told reporters yesterday ahead of the Chinese premiere of the superhero flick, which costars Seth Rogen. “It felt like I was having a vacation in the United States — I took my mother to the production and it felt really good to have some time for myself. I didn’t have that feeling of people surreptitiously taking my picture.” Chou, largely unknown in the US but hugely popular in Asia, plays the role of Kato, sidekick to the Green Hornet, played by Rogen. Rogen has declared himself a fan of Chou’s music, and he and director Michel Gondry have since joked that the singer would “force” them to listen to some of his tracks. “Jay many times took us in his car with his bodyguard and forced us to listen to his music very loud, and if we didn’t like it, he would beat us up,” Gondry joked.
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
A cold surge advisory was today issued for 18 cities and counties across Taiwan, with temperatures of below 10°C forecast during the day and into tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. New Taipei City, Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties are expected to experience sustained temperatures of 10°C or lower, the CWA said. Temperatures are likely to temporarily drop below 10°C in most other areas, except Taitung, Pingtung, Penghu and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, CWA data showed. The cold weather is being caused by a strong continental cold air mass, combined with radiative cooling, a process in which heat escapes from
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