POLITICS
DPP election set for May 27
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday it would hold an election for chairperson on May 27. DPP Deputy Secretary-General Hung Yao-fu (洪耀福) said party members who are interested in the post can expect to register starting late next month or early April, and that about 150,000 members will vote on May 27. The party will hold at least one televised presentation for the candidates, Hung said. Outgoing Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) won 57.14 percent of votes in the 2008 chairperson election. In 2010 she was re-elected with 90.29 percent of the votes. Tsai resigned the chairpersonship after she lost the presidential election to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Jan. 14. Tsai is scheduled to leave office at the end of this month. The party will choose an acting chairperson to stand in until a new chairperson is elected.
SOCIETY
Guide says thanks with java
A tour guide from Changhua County purchased 500 cups of coffee from a convenience store in the east of the country on Thursday to thank the store clerks for returning the purse she left behind. The woman, identified by her surname Yeh (葉), took a group of tourists to Hualien on Jan. 20. She accidentally left her purse behind — which contained a wallet with more than NT$10,000 in cash, her ID and credit cards — while waiting for a tourist who was using the restroom. The clerks handed the purse to a local police officer surnamed Hsieh (謝), who managed to track Yeh down. Hsieh originally intended to deliver the purse to Yeh when he returned home to Greater Taichung for the Lunar New Year, but Yeh asked a friend to retrieve the purse on her behalf to avoid troubling Hsieh. Yeh decided to celebrate her birthday on Thursday by buying 500 cups of coffee, worth about NT$20,000, for those who helped her find the purse and residents in the neighborhood.
FILM
Director wins award
A Taiwanese director has won the top prize at the Kuala Lumpur International Short Film Festival, pocketing about US$5,000 in prize money. Hsieh Chun-yi (謝駿毅), a graduate film student at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Asia in Singapore, won with his film Braid (辮子) on Thursday. The film, which depicts the hardships of a single father trying to raise his young daughter, also won the Student Project Award at the festival, said the organizer of the event.
Twenty-four Republican members of the US House of Representatives yesterday introduced a concurrent resolution calling on the US government to abolish the “one China” policy and restore formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Led by US representatives Tom Tiffany and Scott Perry, the resolution calls for not only re-establishing formal relations, but also urges the US Trade Representative to negotiate a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan and for US officials to advocate for Taiwan’s full membership in the UN and other international organizations. In a news release announcing the resolution, Tiffany, who represents a Wisconsin district, called the “one China” policy “outdated, counterproductive
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
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
TRUMP ERA: The change has sparked speculation on whether it was related to the new US president’s plan to dismiss more than 1,000 Joe Biden-era appointees The US government has declined to comment on a post that indicated the departure of Laura Rosenberger as chair of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). Neither the US Department of State nor the AIT has responded to the Central News Agency’s questions on the matter, after Rosenberger was listed as a former chair on the AIT’s official Web site, with her tenure marked as 2023 to this year. US officials have said previously that they usually do not comment on personnel changes within the government. Rosenberger was appointed head of the AIT in 2023, during the administration of former US president Joe