■ SOCIETY
DGBAS to conduct census
The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) will conduct a decennial population and housing census from Dec. 26 to Jan. 22. The census will be carried out based on registration data and sample surveys, with 1.3 million households and 4.5 million people polled, the agency said. The DGBAS is responsible for conducting the census every 10 years. The census for this year and next year will be the sixth population and housing census since the Republic of China government moved to Taiwan in 1949, the agency said. Censuses were conducted in 1956, 1966, 1980, 1990 and 2000. All local governments will set up task forces next month to visit households during the census period. An estimated 17,000 people are expected to take part in the work. About 80 percent of the world’s countries plan to conduct censuses by the end of this year, which are expected to cover 90 percent of the world’s population, the DGBAS said.
■ CRIME
Former chief sentenced
A former military intelligence chief has been sentenced to 14 years in prison on corruption charges, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday. Lieutenant General Ke Guang-ming (葛廣明) was convicted on Tuesday by a military court of embezzling NT$3.7 million (US$115,000) in 2008 while he was head of the military intelligence bureau, the ministry said. His secretary was sentenced to two years and six months in prison for assisting him in the crime, it said in a statement. A court last year sentenced a retired lieutenant general to more than 10 years in jail on charges of bribery, blackmail and leaking secrets in one of the nation’s worst military scandals.
■ ENERGY
Penghu invests in turbines
Penghu County plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to expand its wind power capacities, an official said yesterday. The county government has set aside more than NT$10 billion for wind turbines and other hardware, the development bureau official told reporters, adding that it would set up an energy company next year to boost wind power output to 125 megawatts by 2020 from the current 10 megawatts. Several foreign and local companies, including Germany-based Enercon, the world’s third-largest wind turbine maker, have expressed an interest in the project, said the official, who declined to be named. Wind power currently supplies 20 percent of the energy needs in Penghu, the official said. The new company could transmit electricity to Taiwan proper when an undersea cable connecting Penghu with Yunlin County is finished in 2014, he said.
■ SOCIETY
APEC forum meets in Taipei
The first APEC food security forum opened in Taipei yesterday in the hopes of developing an action plan by the end of the three-day meeting, Taiwanese agriculture officials said. The forum will launch a discussion on establishing a regional food security mechanism, a pressing issue in light of climate change, Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Wu-hsiung (陳武雄) said. The council organized the forum. The initiative was submitted by Taiwan in the APEC Agricultural Technical Cooperation Working Group last year, Chen said. The council said 95 delegates from 20 economies are attending the forum.
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck off Taitung County at 1:09pm today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 53km northeast of Taitung County Hall at a depth of 12.5km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Taitung County and Hualien County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Nantou County, Chiayi County, Yunlin County, Kaohsiung and Tainan, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage following the quake.
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper
The Chinese wife of a Taiwanese, surnamed Liu (劉), who openly advocated for China’s use of force against Taiwan, would be forcibly deported according to the law if she has not left Taiwan by Friday, National Immigration Agency (NIA) officials said yesterday. Liu, an influencer better known by her online channel name Yaya in Taiwan (亞亞在台灣), obtained permanent residency via marriage to a Taiwanese. She has been reported for allegedly repeatedly espousing pro-unification comments on her YouTube and TikTok channels, including comments supporting China’s unification with Taiwan by force and the Chinese government’s stance that “Taiwan is an inseparable part of China.” Liu
MINOR DISRUPTION: The outage affected check-in and security screening, while passport control was done manually and runway operations continued unaffected The main departure hall and other parts of Terminal 2 at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport lost power on Tuesday, causing confusion among passengers before electricity was fully restored more than an hour later. The outage, the cause of which is still being investigated, began at about midday and affected parts of Terminal 2, including the check-in gates, the security screening area and some duty-free shops. Parts of the terminal immediately activated backup power sources, while others remained dark until power was restored in some of the affected areas starting at 12:23pm. Power was fully restored at 1:13pm. Taoyuan International Airport Corp said in a
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