■ DIPLOMACY
Ma to revisit allies
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is planning to visit Central America again next month, the Presidential Office said yesterday. A Presidential Office official, who wished to remain anonymous, said that Ma was scheduled to visit Panama, Nicaragua and Honduras with transit stops in San Francisco on his way there and in Hawaii on his return. The main purpose of the trip is to attend the inauguration of Panamanian president-elect Ricardo Martinelli. Ma recently returned from the inauguration of Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes. The trip also took him to Belize and Guatemala. Ma canceled a meeting with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega after Ortega twice postponed the meeting, raising concerns over bilateral ties.
■ POLITICS
Yeh appointed vice minister
Research, Development and Evaluation Commission Deputy Minister Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) will succeed Oliver Yu (游芳來) as vice minister of transportation and communication, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The change will take effect in the middle of this month. Yu was transferred to replace Wu Min-yu (吳民佑) as chairman of Chunghwa Post on June 1 after Wu retired. The Executive Yuan said that Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) suggested the replacement and Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) approved it yesterday. Temporarily transferred from the department of business administration at National Sun Yat-sen University, Yeh, a professor of business management, once served as a councilor at the Mainland Affairs Council and a consultant to the Straits Exchange Foundation.
■ DIPLOMACY
DPP protests office closures
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus yesterday criticized the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) for scheduling the closing of five representative offices abroad. “Closing a representative office is a signal of protest against a host country, but MOFA’s closure of overseas representative offices is like a game to them,” DPP caucus whip Lee Chun-yee (李俊毅) told a press conference yesterday, adding that “representative offices are not convenience stores, to open or close as one wishes.” Taiwan’s offices in countries without diplomatic ties with Taiwan indicated they acknowledged Taiwan’s sovereignty, Lee said. The legislator said that MOFA should review why the five offices were inefficient and make improvements rather than close them. Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) announced on Friday the government would close five of its 121 representative offices to better utilize resources.
■ SOCIETY
Cold medicine causes crash
A bus driver’s use of cold medicine that made him drowsy was the apparent cause of a bus accident on Sunday night that left two people dead, Taipei Deputy Mayor Wu Ching-chi (吳清基) said yesterday. A breathalyser test found that Chen Chin-fa (陳進發), the driver of Metro Transit Co’s bus No. 270, was not under the influence of alcohol, said Wu as he met the families of the victims. At about 7:45pm on Sunday, the bus, allegedly traveling at high speed and snaking its way down Yanjiuyuan Road Sec 2, hit a woman, Chi Chi-hui (紀季徽), on a bike before ramming into a motorcycle rider, Liu Yueh-e (劉月娥), on the opposite side of the road. Police said Chi died at the scene, while Liu died later in hospital. The bus stopped after crashing into the garage of a private house.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) and Chunghwa Telecom yesterday confirmed that an international undersea cable near Keelung Harbor had been cut by a Chinese ship, the Shunxin-39, a freighter registered in Cameroon. Chunghwa Telecom said the cable had its own backup equipment, and the incident would not affect telecommunications within Taiwan. The CGA said it dispatched a ship under its first fleet after receiving word of the incident and located the Shunxin-39 7 nautical miles (13km) north of Yehliu (野柳) at about 4:40pm on Friday. The CGA demanded that the Shunxin-39 return to seas closer to Keelung Harbor for investigation over the
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology (NKUST) yesterday promised it would increase oversight of use of Chinese in course materials, following a social media outcry over instances of simplified Chinese characters being used, including in a final exam. People on Threads wrote that simplified Chinese characters were used on a final exam and in a textbook for a translation course at the university, while the business card of a professor bore the words: “Taiwan Province, China.” Photographs of the exam, the textbook and the business card were posted with the comments. NKUST said that other members of the faculty did not see
The Taipei City Government yesterday said contractors organizing its New Year’s Eve celebrations would be held responsible after a jumbo screen played a Beijing-ran television channel near the event’s end. An image showing China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 3 being displayed was posted on the social media platform Threads, sparking an outcry on the Internet over Beijing’s alleged political infiltration of the municipal government. A Taipei Department of Information and Tourism spokesman said event workers had made a “grave mistake” and that the Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) group had the contract to operate the screens. The city would apply contractual penalties on TVBS
A new board game set against the backdrop of armed conflict around Taiwan is to be released next month, amid renewed threats from Beijing, inviting players to participate in an imaginary Chinese invasion 20 years from now. China has ramped up military activity close to Taiwan in the past few years, including massing naval forces around the nation. The game, titled 2045, tasks players with navigating the troubles of war using colorful action cards and role-playing as characters involved in operations 10 days before a fictional Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That includes members of the armed forces, Chinese sleeper agents and pro-China politicians
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