■ DIPLOMACY
Maa appointed SEF deputy
Maa Shaw-chang (馬紹章), executive director of the Chinese Nationalist Party-affiliated think tank the National Policy Foundation, was appointed deputy secretary-general of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) yesterday. Maa, who will be the third deputy secretary-general of the organization, will not begin work until Monday because of the New Year’s holiday. The new position has been left vacant since February last year when Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) resigned to join DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh’s (謝長廷) presidential campaign. Maa obtained his doctoral degree in political science from Ohio State University. He once served at the Mainland Affairs Council as a researcher and at the Council for Economic Planning and Development as a specialist. He was a senior vice manager at Global Investment Holdings before taking up the job at the SEF.
■ ACCIDENTS
Stage collapses at concert
Two dozen performers were injured on Wednesday when a stage partially collapsed at a New Year’s party in Miaoli County. The accident occurred in Toufen Township (頭份), where more than 1,000 people were watching the New Year’s Eve performance. Shortly after the party started, the right part of the stage caved in and two dozen performers who were singing and dancing fell to the ground. “They were rushed to the hospital. Most of them suffered from cuts and scratches and were released from the hospital, but four remain hospitalized. Among the four, two have broken bones,” a duty officer from the Toufen Police Station said by phone. Local authorities are investigating if shoddy work caused the stage to collapse, the Broadcasting Corp of China said.
■ CRIME
Two arrested over cameras
Two men were arrested in California and charged with illegally exporting thermal-imaging cameras to China, a controlled item under national security, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said on Wednesday. The US Attorney’s office in Los Angeles said Sam Ching-sheng Lee, 63, and his nephew Charles Yu-hsu Lee, 31, were charged under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and face up to 25 years in federal prison if convicted. Charles Lee is a native of China and Ching Lee is a native of Taiwan, the DOJ said in a statement. The two men are suspected of exporting thermal-imaging cameras to China from 2002 to 2007 without a license and in circumvention of export laws, through MBA, an import/export business located in Hacienda Heights, California.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Siew releases sika deer
Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) attended a ceremony at Kenting National Park yesterday to witness the release of 20 Formosan sika deer into the wild. Addressing the ceremony that marked the deer’s release as well as the park’s 25th founding anniversary, Siew said that although Kenting National Park was established 110 years later than Yellowstone National Park in the US, it has made commendable achievements in terms of wildlife conservation. Beginning with a herd of 22 pure-bred Formosan sika deer, Kenting park authorities have raised nearly 300 offspring of the core herd, which was donated by Taipei Yuanshan Zoo in 1984. Since its establishment the same year, the park has released more than 100 of the protected animals that it bred into the wild.
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
Taiwan plans to cull as many as 120,000 invasive green iguanas this year to curb the species’ impact on local farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Chiu Kuo-hao (邱國皓), a section chief in the ministry’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, on Sunday said that green iguanas have been recorded across southern Taiwan and as far north as Taichung. Although there is no reliable data on the species’ total population in the country, it has been estimated to be about 200,000, he said. Chiu said about 70,000 iguanas were culled last year, including about 45,000 in Pingtung County, 12,000 in Tainan, 9,900 in
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
ALLEGED SABOTAGE: The damage inflicted by the vessel did not affect connection, as data were immediately rerouted to other cables, Chunghwa Telecom said Taiwan suspects that a Chinese-owned cargo vessel damaged an undersea cable near its northeastern coast on Friday, in an alleged act of sabotage that highlights the vulnerabilities of Taipei’s offshore communications infrastructure. The ship is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company whose director is Chinese, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. An unidentified Taiwanese official cited in the report described the case as sabotage. The incident followed another Chinese vessel’s suspected involvement in the breakages of data cables in the Baltic Sea in November last year. While fishing trawlers are known to sometimes damage such equipment, nation states have also
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