■ POLITICS
Election bulletin out
The Central Election Commission yesterday published the election bulletin for the January legislative elections. The legislative poll will be held between 8am and 4pm on Jan. 12 at polling stations designated in the voting notice mailed to voters before the election, the bulletin said. A total of 73 legislative seats will be elected from districts, while six seats will be elected by Aboriginal constituents. In addition, 34 at large and overseas representative seats will be decided based on a list submitted by political parties that have received more than 5 percent of the vote. At least half of each party's elected lawmakers must be female, the bulletin said. The maximum campaign budget is NT$11,779,000 (US$365,000) for the 73 district and mountain Aboriginal candidates, and NT$11,582,000 for plains Aboriginal candidates, the bulletin said.
■ DEFENSE
Premier rebuts nuke report
Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) yesterday dismissed a Chinese-language Yazhou Zhoukan report that Taiwan had sought help from former Indian defense minister Shri George Fernandes to develop nuclear weapons. "We will not develop nuclear weapons, nor do we possess nuclear weapons ... [the report] is pure speculation," Chang Chun-hsiung said when fielding questions from People First Party Legislator Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) during a question-and-answer session in the legislature. The Yazhou Zhoukan report this week said that Fernandes had secretly visited Taiwan several times, while Ministry of National Defense and National Security Council personnel had also visited India several times in secret. The purpose of the visits, the article said, was to help Taiwan develop nuclear weapons. Minister of National Defense Lee Tien-yu (李天羽), who was also at the question-and-answer session, denied that the ministry had such plans, adding that the National Security Council had never discussed the issue with him.
■ CRIME
Wang's detention extended
The Taipei District Court yesterday decided to extend the detention of Eastern Multimedia (東森多媒體) group president Gary Wang (王令麟) by two months. Wang was indicted in August on charges of embezzling corporate funds. Taipei judges said they made the decision to prevent Wang from colluding with other defendants or witnesses to give false testimony. Wang was indicted on Aug. 13, along with 31 suspects. He was alleged to have embezzled NT$3.3 billion (US$102.23 million) from the Eastern Multimedia Group and to have colluded with his father Wang You-theng (王又曾), founder of the Rebar Asia Pacific Group (力霸亞太企業 集團), to loot NT$37.9 billion from the Rebar group.
■ DEFENSE
Base worries Kinmen
The Kinmen County Government expressed concern on Thursday that the central government could propose building a missile base there, adding that Kinmen residents wanted to continue peaceful exchanges with China. Kinmen County officials said that local residents had indicated they were resolutely opposed to any plan to construct missile bases there after a media report on Sept. 27 said the Ministry of National Defense would complete a missile base on Matsu Island by the end of this year. Kinmen officials said residents were worried that if such a project were launched, it would upset cultural and tourism exchanges with China.
■ CULTURE
Shan bids `farewell to life'
Cardinal Paul Shan Kuo-hsi (單國璽), one of only three cardinals of Chinese origin from Taiwan, who has fought an uphill battle against cancer for over a year, is scheduled to bring his round-the-island lecture tour to Taipei today, according to a religious source yesterday. The cardinal was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma -- the most common form of lung cancer -- more than a year ago. Over the past year, Shan has undergone a number of surgeries and his condition has improved and then worsened several times, prompting him to launch a "farewell to life" lecture tour to share his thoughts about life and human compassion, the officials from the Taiwan bishops' conference said. The cardinal has already visited Kaohsiung, Chiayi, Taichung and Hsinchu over the last month. Shan, 83, was created and proclaimed cardinal by Pope John Paul II on Feb. 21, 1998. He is currently serving his fourth term as president of the Chinese Regional Bishops' Conference.
■ ECONOMY
Hualien seeks to ease rule
A township chief in Hualien County urged the central government to ease rules on erecting new buildings in areas adjacent to Hualien Airport to help boost local development. Hsincheng Township (新城) Mayor Her Lee-tai (何禮臺) issued the call after the Executive Yuan approved relaxation of building controls in the neighborhood of Songshan Airport in Taipei during its weekly meeting on Wednesday. According to Her, local residents living near Hualien Airport -- a military-cum-commercial facility -- have long suffered from noise and lagging development because of current construction restrictions. Now that the Executive Yuan has agreed to ease the regulations governing the height of buildings near the airport in Taipei, raising the limit from 60m to 90m, Hsincheng residents expect that the central government would do the same for Hualien Airport to galvanize local development, Her said. Building limitations have dragged down the local real-estate and property markets and raised investment costs in Hsincheng, keeping investors away and generating no handsome tax revenue for local county authorities, Her said.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
China’s newest Type-076 amphibious assault ship has two strengths and weaknesses, wrote a Taiwanese defense expert, adding that further observations of its capabilities are warranted. Jiang Hsin-biao (江炘杓), an assistant researcher at the National Defense and Security Research, made the comments in a report recently published by the institute about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military and political development. China christened its new assault ship Sichuan in a ceremony on Dec. 27 last year at Shanghai’s Hudong Shipyard, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. “The vessel, described as the world’s largest amphibious assault ship by the [US think tank] Center for Strategic and International
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