POLITICS
Vote-buying arrests made
Greater Kaohsiung judges yesterday ordered three people detained on suspicion of vote-buying for an Aboriginal candidate. Prosecutors said that Ko Wu-ta (柯武達), acting director of the Namasiya District (那瑪夏) office in Greater Kaohsiung, was suspected of engaging in vote-buying between October and November last year. They said that Ko had asked Chou Wei-ping (周維平) to deliver cash to Chou Hsiou-mei (周秀美), an elementary-school principal who distributed the money to several people — including a man named Lu Bao-shen (盧保生) — to conduct vote-buying for the candidate. Prosecutors said Lu was suspected of bribing a number of voters, giving them NT$2,000 each. Chou Hsiou-mei is now in detention. Meanwhile, in Hualien County, nine people from Sioulin Township (秀林) were arrested on suspicion of being involved in vote-buying. Prosecutors seized NT$300,000 in cash and a number of health food products from one of the suspects’ residence. They said the nine suspects had handed out between NT$2,000 and NT$2,500 in cash to bribe voters. Hualien District Prosecutors’ Office head Lin Ching-tsung (林慶宗) said prosecutors had received more than 50 complaints about vote-buying, of which five were “very suspicious” and were being investigated. To avoid affecting the elections, the Ministry of Justice has asked prosecutors not to name candidates being investigated for vote-buying.
SCIENCE
Expert saves NT$6.8m
A forensic expert said yesterday she saved a total of NT$6.8 million (US$226,560) in damaged banknotes after months of effort, the largest single collection of such notes in Taiwan. Liu Hui-fen (劉蕙芬), who has worked for the Investigation Bureau for 30 years and has trained herself to be a “jigsaw expert” since 2006, accepted NT$7.2 million water-damaged notes in May last year from a man surnamed Huang (黃) living in Greater Tainan. Liu first used an ultrasonic vibrator on the banknotes and managed to recover NT$1.85 million. Another month of using the vibrator recovered NT$2.5 million more. Liu then spent five months to restore NT$2.45 million. Huang, who lost about NT$400,000 in unrecoverable notes, expressed gratitude to Liu. The bureau dealt with 12 such cases in 2006, when the service first began to be offered, and by last year it dealt with 83 cases, said Hu Hsing-yung (胡興勇), a bureau section chief.
SOCIETY
Free firecracker CDs
The Taipei City Government is giving away free CDs of exploding firecrackers ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday as part of efforts to avoid air pollution. It has long been a tradition to set off firecrackers to celebrate the beginning of Lunar New Year. However, the smoke causes air pollution, while the paper left behind also pollutes the environment, city environmental officials said yesterday. The city government has prepared the CDs for people who want to have a festive atmosphere without disturbing their neighbors or polluting, the officials said. The CDs are available from the Department of Environment Protection, or can be obtained from the Web site of the Environment Protection Administration at http://ivyl.epa.gov.tw/noise/DD/D-01.htm, they said.
BUSINESS
CPC inks deal for LNG
CPC Corp, Taiwan has signed a long-term contract to buy natural gas from Australian supplier Ichthys LNG. CPC said it planned to buy 1.59 million tonnes of liquified natural gas (LNG) annually for 15 years, beginning in 2017 at the earliest.
DIPLOMACY
Liu sentencing hearing set
The sentencing hearing for Jacqueline Liu (劉姍姍), the Taiwanese diplomat who has been detained on labor fraud charges since November, is scheduled for Jan. 27. Don Ledford, a spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri, confirmed the sentencing date in an e-mail discussing Liu’s case. Liu, the former director-general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Kansas City, Missouri, was arrested by the FBI on Nov. 10 on charges of underpaying and overworking two Filipino housekeepers. After she was arrested and detained, her lawyer negotiated a plea bargain agreement under which Liu would plead guilty to the charges and then be sentenced to time served and pay US$80,044 in restitution to the two victims before being deported. US District Judge David Gregory Kays will decide at the sentencing hearing whether the court accepts the agreement.
CRIME
Heist suspects arrested
Five suspects have been arrested in connection with a heist last week in northern Taiwan, police said yesterday. On Monday last week, three employees of Taiwan Business Bank’s Houli (后里) branch in Greater Taichung were robbed by a gang after they collected NT$1.27 million (US$42,370) in cash from a restaurant near the Liyutan Reservoir in neighboring Miaoli County to deposit in the bank. On their way back to work, their car was stopped by a group headed by the alleged leader, surnamed Chiu (邱), in a staged traffic accident and they were robbed at gunpoint. Chiu, in his 50s, is said to have planned the heist after learning that the bank sends staff to collect cash from the restaurant on a regular basis. Chiu and four accomplices were arrested, but one suspect was still at large, police said.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods