■ Military affairs
Safe Taiwan key for Japan
Defending Taiwan is defending Japan, political analyst Hideaki Kase said in Tokyo yesterday. Speaking at a seminar organized to promote defense cooperation among the US, Japan and Taiwan, Kase said that if China were to attack Taiwan, Japan would be plunged into a crisis similar to that before the 1894 war between the Ching Dynasty and Japan. He said that this is why Japan has begun military exchanges with Taiwan in recent years. Saying that the Communist regime in China is doomed to collapse, Kase said the most important thing for Japan now is to safeguard Taiwan's security.
■ Military affairs
Ammunition theft probed
The Ministry of National Defense said yesterday that it will track down over 11,000 bullets suspected of being stolen from the military and discipline those who are responsible for dereliction of duty. Ministry officials said that a thorough check on an ammunition depot on July 19 found a shortage of 11,700 rounds of 9mm bullets. A task force formed to investigate the missing ammunition decided that the missing rounds were ammunition that the military wanted to phase out, the officials said. The task force has since questioned three suspects and found in the home of one suspect 790 9mm bullets. The military court in Kaohsiung will continue to pursue the case. In view of the incident, the ministry will discipline the officials involved and ask for heightened management of ammunition to avoid a repeat of the incident. The ministry started a large-scale check of ammunition depots after Kaohsiung police seized a large haul of ammunition, including rocket-fired grenades used by the military, when they tried to prevent a battle between rival gangsters earlier this year.
■ Crime
Fake bomb found
The police yesterday retrieved an alleged explosive package but discovered it to be a fake. The package was discovered by pedestrians in the underpass in front of Ming Chuan University around 1:40pm yesterday. Whoever placed the package had written "Warning! This is a bomb" on the package so pedestrians immediately reported it to the police. The Taipei City Police Depart-ment's Shihlin Precinct immediately sent its explosive experts to the scene to disarm the alleged bomb but officers later confirmed that there were no explosives inside the package.
■ Society
Ma the matchmaker
Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has the chance to be a matchmaker for army Major General Chang Shao-kang (張少康). While Ma was leading a group of reporters on a visit to Kinmen yesterday, Chang's friends asked Ma to do a favor for them because Chang, 47, is now the only bachelor among the nation's generals and admirals. Chang was on a business trip in Taipei while Ma was visiting Kinmen so he did not know his friends in Kinmen had made the request of the mayor. However, when approached by reporters, Chang said that he was not worried about his marital status. "I have dedicated myself to my country," he said. "As for marriage, I will leave the decision to God." Chang said that he has dated ever since his teenage years but he has never met the right person. "It is difficult to be a soldier's wife," he said. "For example, I have to relocate from time to time. That is one reason that I am still single now."
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
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