■ EDUCATION
NCCU to host prize winners
Pulitzer Prize winners Steve Fainaru and Liu Heung-shing (劉香成) will visit National Chengchi University (NCCU) tomorrow and on Saturday, the school said yesterday. Liu, the winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and a former photographer for The Associated Press, will give a speech titled “Keeping Record of China through Photography” at 3:40pm tomorrow, NCCU said. Fainaru, a reporter for the Washington Post, who won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, will deliver a speech on reporting international conflicts and wars at 9am on Saturday, the school said.
■ CRIME
Chen defends former aide
Former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) office yesterday jumped to a former aide’s defense, saying that former Presidential Office deputy secretary-general Ma Yung-cheng (馬永成) did not pocket the “state affairs fund” or use fake receipts to claim funds. Ma was taken into custody on Tuesday for suspected embezzlement of public funds during Chen’s presidency. Chen’s office issued a statement yesterday saying that the president’s discretionary fund did not all come from the budget of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the fund was used for public purposes only. Chen did not pocket any of the money, either, the statement said. The statement said that some expenses used for secret diplomatic missions were not recorded, but this did not mean the money was not spent. To find out the truth of the matter, the statement said, prosecutors must conduct a thorough investigation into the spending of the fund to see whether the money was actually spent on public affairs as Chen claimed.
■ CRIME
Drug ring busted by police
A mobile investigation unit made up of Coast Guard Administration officers and local police busted a drug ring in Kaohsiung City on Tuesday, arresting four suspects and seizing weapons and an assortment of illicit drugs. The unit said it seized 4.4kg of heroin, 14kg of amphetamines, 0.7kg of marijuana, and 172g of ketamine, along with three guns. Members of the ring had been selling drugs in the city and had rented an apartment in the area to carry out their drug operations, according to the unit. After following and monitoring the drug ring members’ activities for several days, officers from the unit decided to intercept them while driving in the city and proceeded to detain them while a search of their apartment was carried out.
■ HEALTH
Organ donation ranks high
The organ donation rate in Taiwan is the second highest in Asia and the Middle East, behind Israel, but still lags far behind that of Western countries, the Department of Health’s Bureau of Medical Affairs said yesterday. According to the bureau, a yearly average of 6.8 people per million people in Taiwan donated organs in the past three years, while the number for Israel was 8.8 per million. But that rate is much lower than those in Western countries. Spain had a yearly average of 34.4 donors during the same three years; the US had a rate of 25.1 and France’s rate was 23.6, according to the bureau. Nonetheless, Taiwan’s rate is increasing rapidly, officials said. This year, 161 people who passed away in Taiwan donated their organs to help 597 people, an increase of 41 percent from last year, Louis Liu (劉在銓), chief executive officer of the Taiwan Organ Registry and Sharing Center, told a news conference.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), spokeswoman Yang Chih-yu (楊智伃) and Legislator Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) would be summoned by police for questioning for leading an illegal assembly on Thursday evening last week, Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said today. The three KMT officials led an assembly outside the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office, a restricted area where public assembly is not allowed, protesting the questioning of several KMT staff and searches of KMT headquarters and offices in a recall petition forgery case. Chu, Yang and Hsieh are all suspected of contravening the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) by holding
PRAISE: Japanese visitor Takashi Kubota said the Taiwanese temple architecture images showcased in the AI Art Gallery were the most impressive displays he saw Taiwan does not have an official pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, because of its diplomatic predicament, but the government-backed Tech World pavilion is drawing interest with its unique recreations of works by Taiwanese artists. The pavilion features an artificial intelligence (AI)-based art gallery showcasing works of famous Taiwanese artists from the Japanese colonial period using innovative technologies. Among its main simulated displays are Eastern gouache paintings by Chen Chin (陳進), Lin Yu-shan (林玉山) and Kuo Hsueh-hu (郭雪湖), who were the three young Taiwanese painters selected for the East Asian Painting exhibition in 1927. Gouache is a water-based
Taiwan would welcome the return of Honduras as a diplomatic ally if its next president decides to make such a move, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. “Of course, we would welcome Honduras if they want to restore diplomatic ties with Taiwan after their elections,” Lin said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, when asked to comment on statements made by two of the three Honduran presidential candidates during the presidential campaign in the Central American country. Taiwan is paying close attention to the region as a whole in the wake of a
OFF-TARGET: More than 30,000 participants were expected to take part in the Games next month, but only 6,550 foreign and 19,400 Taiwanese athletes have registered Taipei city councilors yesterday blasted the organizers of next month’s World Masters Games over sudden timetable and venue changes, which they said have caused thousands of participants to back out of the international sporting event, among other organizational issues. They also cited visa delays and political interference by China as reasons many foreign athletes are requesting refunds for the event, to be held from May 17 to 30. Jointly organized by the Taipei and New Taipei City governments, the games have been rocked by numerous controversies since preparations began in 2020. Taipei City Councilor Lin Yen-feng (林延鳳) said yesterday that new measures by