SOCIETY
Bomb squad finds mooncakes
Police in Greater Kaohsiung mobilized their bomb squad after a suspicious package was found in a subway station toilet, only to find it contained nothing more dangerous than mooncakes. A cleaner called police to report the package left on top of a garbage can on Saturday. Part of the station was cordoned off and explosives experts were called in. TV pictures showed a police officer in a full protective suit entering the toilet carrying specialist equipment, while other officers waited outside with more gear. The officer then emerged carrying a bright blue cardboard box full of mooncakes. “It was X-rayed first to see what it was and whether there was any chemical or electrical reaction,” the local police station chief said on TV. “Someone must have put it down to use the toilet and forgotten it when they left.”
EDUCATION
Quotas for doctors set
The Ministry of Education yesterday said it would set limits on enrollment for doctoral degrees given the high number of doctoral graduates in the country. Screening for opening doctoral classes will also be subject to strict regulations, it said. The approval rate for the past several years was about 20 percent, it said. Newly established doctoral classes will each be permitted to recruit up to three students only and universities will have to make adjustments to their overall recruitment quotas. “Doctoral classes that have not seen a registration of at least 70 percent for three consecutive years, or those that have failed to pass assessment and re--assessment, will have their number of recruits cut,” an education official said.
COMPETITION
Police, firefighters bag golds
A 37-member Taiwanese team claimed 92 medals, including 37 golds, on Sunday at this year’s World Police and Fire Games, three more than last year’s haul despite having seven fewer members. The team performed especially well in the rifle section, grabbing 11 golds, five silvers and five bronzes in the individual events and 12 golds and four silvers in the team category, National Police Agency Deputy -Director-General Lin Kuo-tung (林國棟) said. Liu Cheng-ming (劉政明) led the team with two golds and two silvers in the small-bore rifle section and two golds in the large-bore rifle event. Lin said the friendly competition between nations helped police officers and firefighters stay in shape and strengthened their bonds. It also promoted Taiwan’s international image, he said. Although the team was registered under the name “Chinese Taipei,” the national flag made an appearance many times at the event, Lin said.
SPORTS
Athlete escapes bushfires
Marathoner Chen Yen-po (陳彥伯) narrowly escaped Australian bushfires while participating in the Kimberley Ultramarathon, his agent said yesterday. Chen saw the flames at the 40km mark on the 100km route, his agent said, adding that in less than three minutes, the runner was blocked by billowing smoke and searing heat. The agent said Chen managed to make it to a checkpoint where he was informed of the emergency situation by the organizers and removed from the route along with the other competitors. Chen said he could have been trapped if he had been exhausted and slowed down when the blaze was coming after him. Chen has run through polar regions, across ice sheets and vast deserts, but said none of them compared with the horror of his latest experience, his agent told reporters.
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