TOURISM
Bureau offers vouchers
South Korean visitors to Taiwan will get a chance to sample local night market delicacies for free through a recent promotion by Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau, a bureau official said yesterday. Chen Pei-tsen, head of the Taiwan Tourism Bureau office in the South Korean capital of Seoul, said tourists traveling to Taiwan need only show evidence of their Taiwan plane reservations at the bureau’s office in Seoul to receive a NT$100 voucher valid at participating stalls in night markets around Taiwan. The scheme is part of an international tourism promotion to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Republic of China next year. The vouchers can be used at specified night markets in Taipei, Keelung, Taichung, Chiayi, Fengshan and Yilan. The promotion runs through Feb. 28.
SCIENCE
EMBO elects scientist
A Taiwanese has been elected for the first time as an associate member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), Taiwan’s leading research institute said yesterday. Academia Sinica President Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) was honored with a life-time membership in the Germany-based organization on the basis of his outstanding work in the field of biochemistry, the institute said. Wong is recognized internationally for his work in new synthetic chemistry and enzyme catalysis, which contributed greatly to the development of vaccines. The researcher was quoted as saying that he hopes the honor would help boost academic exchanges between Taiwan and Europe. His duties as an EMBO associate member include serving as an editing consultant for the EMBO journal, assisting young scholars in their research and participating in or leading EMBO’s research projects.
SCIENCE
APEC center to open
The APEC Research Center for Typhoon and Society (ACTS) will open its headquarters in Taipei next week. In September, the 39th Industrial Science and Technology Working Group (ISTWG) under APEC in Sendai, Japan, announced the establishment of the ACTS to deal with disasters resulting from typhoons in the Asia Pacific region. The National Taiwan University (NTU) last year was commissioned to set up a team and worked with the Philippines to establish the center. A proposal to establish the ACTS presented by Ben Jong-dao (周仲島), a professor in the Department of Atmosphere Science at NTU, was generally supported by the 21 economic entities at the 38th ISTWG meeting in April and was formally adopted in September. The Philippines will also establish a branch headquarters of the ACTS.
DIPLOMACY
Taiwan donates to Haiti
The Taiwanese government has donated US$200,000 to Haiti to help it stem a cholera epidemic that has reached its capital Port-au-Prince, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a press statement yesterday. The death toll from Haiti’s cholera epidemic has reached more than 1,100 and about 18,000 Haitian people affected by the disease are in hospitals. The country faces huge problems with sanitation after a major earthquake struck the country in January, the ministry said, adding that the Centers for Disease Control had transported the first batch of medical equipment on Nov. 11 and is preparing for more provisions to help Taiwan’s Caribbean ally with disease prevention and medical treatment. The Taiwan government will continue to pay attention to the epidemic and provide necessary assistance, the ministry added.
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
TAIWAN ADVOCATES: The resolution, which called for the recognition of Taiwan as a country and normalized relations, was supported by 22 Republican representatives Two US representatives on Thursday reintroduced a resolution calling for the US to end its “one China” policy, resume formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan and negotiate a bilateral Taiwan-US free trade agreement. Republican US representatives Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania’s 10th District were backed by 22 Republican members of the US House of Representatives. The two congressmen first introduced the resolution together in 2021. The resolution called on US President Donald Trump to “abandon the antiquated ‘one China’ policy in favor of a policy that recognizes the objective reality that Taiwan is an independent country, not
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)