SOCIETY
Firefighter dies after coma
A volunteer firefighter died yesterday of injuries sustained in gas pipeline explosions in Greater Kaohsiung on July 31 and Aug. 1, bringing the number of fatalities in the incident to 31. Tao Ting-chou (陶廷舟), a volunteer firefighter for 16 years, died in hospital shortly after midnight, family members and the hospital said. He was 46. Tao suffered burns and severe head and back injuries. He had been in a coma since the blasts. The explosions, caused by a leak from a pipe in a box culvert, killed 30 others and injured 310. They also ripped up roads along several blocks of commercial and residential buildings in Cianjhen District (前鎮). Repairs are expected to take until December. Authorities are still investigating why a section of petrochemical pipeline crosses paths with the culvert and who should be held responsible.
SOCIETY
CYC lowers age cap
Accommodation at youth centers run by the nonprofit China Youth Corps (CYC) is no longer to be available to people aged 40 or over, in line with regulation changes by the Ministry of Education. However, people over the age limit can still use the facilities if they are students, participants in certain public activities or CYC employees or volunteers, the ministry’s Youth Development Administration said. CYC operates 13 youth centers around the nation in scenic areas and tourist destinations. Accommodation was previously available to anyone under 45. The Youth Development Administration said the age adjustment was made to be consistent with the age limit for applicants to the Junior Chamber International Taiwan and candidates for the Outstanding Young Person award.
SOCIETY
Ketamine tops seizures
Ketamine accounted for 66 percent of all illegal narcotics seized last year, making it apparently the most commonly used illicit drug in Taiwan, according to the latest National Audit Office report. Police seized 3,656kg of illegal drugs last year, of which 2,421kg were the class-3 narcotic ketamine, the report said, citing statistics from the Ministry of Justice. The numbers represent significant increases from 2008, when 1,890kg of illegal drugs, including 799.5kg of ketamine, were seized. Ketamine has made up nearly all of the class-3 narcotics seized over the past six years, from 99.9 percent in 2008 to 98.8 percent last year. The number of people convicted of class-3 narcotic offenses soared from 398 in 2008 to 2,629 last year. The number of people who received administrative penalties for using or possessing less than 20 grams of class-3 narcotics tripled from 9,389 people in 2010 to 30,239 people last year, 10 percent of whom were under 18.
POLITICS
Ma speaks to young voters
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that his party would negotiate with the opposition to push forward the long-stalled legislative review of the cross-strait service trade pact when the legislative session begins next month. At a discussion session with young voters, Ma said the Legislative Yuan has been unable to review and endorse the pact signed in June last year because of what he termed obstruction by the Democratic Progressive Party. Ma also rejected arguments that the cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) increases dependence on China, saying that the ECFA would open the possibility of signing trade deals with other countries and thus reduce Taiwan’s dependence on China.
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