■ 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.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
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