■ Protests
Sex workers march on TSU
Activist group the Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters yesterday morning stormed the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) national congress with chants of "Don't fine Taiwanese prostitutes" and burlesque dancing. At the demonstration, collective workers asked the TSU to ensure that its candidates in the year-end legislative elections are supportive of an amendment to Article 80 of the Social Order Law (社會秩序法). The collective said that it is unfair that only sex workers and not patrons are punished for having sexual activities. The collective's secretary-general Wang Fang-ping (王芳萍) urged voters to ask their candidates to remedy the problem with promises to revise the article so that neither party in a sexual exchange is punished.
■ Politics
Anti-nuke group travels
A nationwide walk to solicit support for lowering the threshold for holding a referendum on the fate of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant came to Kaohsiung yesterday. More than 30 participants wearing bamboo hats took part in the Kaohsiung leg of the walk sponsored by the Nuke-4 Referendum Initiative Association. Wu Chien-kuo (吳建國), director of the association, said the Referendum Law passed by the Legislative Yuan last November was flawed, which he said has hindered the people in exercising their democratic rights. That law has set an "unreasonably high threshold" for the public, Wu said. People must collect 800,000 signatures from eligible voters to propose a referendum. Moreover, under the law a high number of "yes" votes will decide if the referendum is effective, which he said runs counter to democratic norms. The group has staged several nationwide walks to oppose the nuclear plant in Kungliao.
■ Education
Chen visits young scholars
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday visited two Aboriginal students in Hsinchu who have won presidential education prizes. Chen first visited Yu Han (余涵), a junior high graduate who lives in the remote mountainous area of Chienshih village. Chen said Yu, living in an area lacking educational resources, still managed to pass the entrance examination to be a student at National Hsinchu Girls' Senior High School. "She is the pride of all her tribal neighbors," Chen said, encouraging her to study hard. Later Chen visited a tribe in the mountains where Chen Shih-wei (陳世偉) lives. Chen Shih-wei is an elementary school graduate. In addition to obtaining good marks in school, Chen Shih-wei also has to take care of his younger brothers and sisters.
■ Singapore
Drug suspects charged
Three men were charged yesterday with importing controlled drugs after they were allegedly caught with 20,000 tranquilizer tablets in Singapore, authorities said. The men -- two Taiwanese and one Singaporean -- face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and 15 strokes of the cane if convicted on the charge. The bureau declined to release their names. Officers detained the trio at a hotel on Thursday night after finding Erimin 5 tablets in the possession of one of the Taiwanese men, the bureau said in a statement. The tablets were worth about S$200,000 (US$116,500), it said. Police also confiscated more than S$1,500 (US$875) of suspected drug proceeds from the Singaporean man, the bureau said.
COLLABORATION: As TSMC is building an advanced wafer fab in Dresden, Germany, it needs to build a comprehensive supply chain in Europe, Joseph Wu said Taiwan is planning to team up with the Czech Republic to build a semiconductor cluster in the European country, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said on Friday. Wu, who led a Taiwanese delegation at the annual GLOBSEC Forum held in Prague from Friday to today, said in a news conference that Taiwan seeks to foster cooperation between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and its counterparts in Czechia. Such cooperation is expected to transform the country into one of the most important semiconductor clusters in Europe over the next three to five years, he added. As TSMC is building an advanced
A joint declaration by Pacific leaders was reissued yesterday morning with mentions of Taiwan removed after China slammed an earlier version as a “mistake” that “must be corrected.” After five days of talks in Tonga, a “cleared” communique was released on Friday that reaffirmed a 30-year-old agreement allowing Taiwan to take part in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). However, the wording immediately raised the ire of Chinese diplomats, who piled pressure on Pacific leaders to amend the document. The forum reissued the communique without explanation yesterday morning, conspicuously deleting the paragraph concerning the bloc’s “relations with Taiwan.” “It must be a
A tropical depression in waters east of the Philippines could develop into a tropical storm as soon as today and bring rainfall as it approaches, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, while issuing heat warnings for 14 cities and counties. Weather model simulations show that there are still considerable differences in the path that the tropical depression is projected to take. It might pass through the Bashi Channel to the South China Sea or turn northeast and move toward the sea south of Japan, CWA forecaster Yeh Chih-chun (葉致均) said, adding that the uncertainty of its movement is still high,
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
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