CRIME
Former MIB chief impeached
The Control Yuan yesterday impeached former Military Intelligence Bureau director-general Ke Guang-ming (葛廣明) for allegedly embezzling NT$3.7 million (US$127,498) in 2008. The Control Yuan voted 12 to 1, passing a proposal initiated by Control Yuan members Yu Teng-fang (余騰芳) and Lee Ping-nan (李炳南) to impeach Ke. The Control Yuan later referred Ke to the Public Functionary Disciplinary Sanction Commission for discipline. On Aug. 17 last year, Ke was sentenced to 14 years in prison by a military court in the first trial of the case. Ke’s secretary, Tien Chia-tung (田家棟), was sentenced to two years and six months in prison for allegedly assisting him in the crime. Ke was accused of putting the funds in his personal safe and taking NT$450,000 for personal use.
ECONOMY
Kinmen Kaoliang posts record
A Kinmen County -Government-run liquor company reported record sales last year and vowed to expand its capacity. Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor Inc posted revenues of more than NT$12.3 billion (US$424 million) last year, of which NT$431 million originated in Xiamen, China, according to Yao Song-ling (姚松齡), managing director of the 59-year-old company. The company accounts for a substantial part of the annual revenue of Kinmen County. It contributed NT$4.9 billion to the county’s coffers last year on the back of strong sales, NT$700 million more than in 2009 and 22.5 percent more than projected in the company’s annual budget. The company also paid NT$2.88 billion in liquor tax to the central government, Yao said. Faced with competition from Chinese products, the company said it planned to raise annual production from 2.5 billion liters to between 4 billion and 4.2 billion liters within three years.
DIPLOMACY
More active WTO role sought
Taiwan will seek to play a more active role in the WTO this year, Taiwan’s WTO representative was quoted as saying in a recent interview with the WTO center of the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER), a Taipei-based think tank. In the interview, Lin Yi-fu (林義夫) said Taiwan intended to actively participate in multilateral trade negotiations and various committees under the WTO, adding that Taiwan’s delegation would seek to chair committees to boost its active participation this year. Taiwan will also seek to play more of a leading role in several negotiating groups it has joined, such as Recently Acceded Members (RAMs) — countries that negotiated and joined the WTO after 1995 — and Friends of A-D Negotiations (FANs), a coalition of countries lobbying for agriculture to be treated as a diverse and special case because of non-trade concerns, Lin was quoted as saying. He also said Taiwan should try to solve trade disputes through the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism more often.
SOCIETY
New Taipei plans food banks
The New Taipei City (新北市) Government said it would soon establish food and daily necessity banks around the city to help tide disadvantaged people and families over the current cold weather. New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) said the city government would set up the commodity banks in 10 social welfare centers around the city prior to this year’s Lunar New Year, which falls on Feb. 3. Chu said the city government would foot the bill for the food and daily necessities to be provided by the banks. He also called on the public to make donations.
Staff Writer, with CNA
LITERATURE
ALS sufferer wins first prize
A woman suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) won first prize in a literature competition held at the Taipei International Flora Exposition on Sunday, for comparing her life to the short-lived, but glamorous night-blooming cereus, or moon flower. Lin Yueh-ku (林月姑), who has been suffering from ALS — known as Lou Gehrig’s disease — for 13 years. She used her middle finger to click a mouse and compose the 2,000-word piece titled Life of the Night-Blooming Cereus — the Transient Beauty, that stood out among the 201 submitted works. Able to type only 50 words per hour, the 54-year-old spent a month depicting scenes from her life.
ENTERTAINMENT
Chou enjoys US ‘vacation’
For pop singer Jay Chou (周杰倫), star of the smash hit The Green Hornet, Tinseltown offers a welcome break from the paparazzi in Asia. “As an artist, I need a lot of space, which I cannot really get in many places in Asia,” Chou told reporters yesterday ahead of the Chinese premiere of the superhero flick, which costars Seth Rogen. “It felt like I was having a vacation in the United States — I took my mother to the production and it felt really good to have some time for myself. I didn’t have that feeling of people surreptitiously taking my picture.” Chou, largely unknown in the US but hugely popular in Asia, plays the role of Kato, sidekick to the Green Hornet, played by Rogen. Rogen has declared himself a fan of Chou’s music, and he and director Michel Gondry have since joked that the singer would “force” them to listen to some of his tracks. “Jay many times took us in his car with his bodyguard and forced us to listen to his music very loud, and if we didn’t like it, he would beat us up,” Gondry joked.
Global bodies should stop excluding Taiwan for political reasons, President William Lai (賴清德) told Pope Francis in a letter, adding that he agrees war has no winners. The Vatican is one of only 12 countries to retain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, and Taipei has watched with concern efforts by Beijing and the Holy See to improve ties. In October, the Vatican and China extended an accord on the appointment of Catholic bishops in China for four years, pointing to a new level of trust between the two parties. Lai, writing to the pope in response to the pontiff’s message on Jan. 1’s
A Vietnamese migrant worker on Thursday won the NT$12 million (US$383,590) jackpot on a scratch-off lottery ticket she bought from a lottery shop in Changhua County’s Puyan Township (埔鹽), Taiwan Lottery Co said yesterday. The lottery winner, who is in her 30s and married, said she would continue to work in Taiwan and send her winnings to her family in Vietnam to improve their life. More Taiwanese and migrant workers have flocked to the lottery shop on Sec 2 of Jhangshuei Road (彰水路) to share in the luck. The shop owner, surnamed Chen (陳), said that his shop has been open for just
TAKE BREAKS: A woman developed cystitis by refusing to get up to use the bathroom while playing mahjong for fear of disturbing her winning streak, a doctor said People should stand up and move around often while traveling or playing mahjong during the Lunar New Year holiday, as prolonged sitting can lead to cystitis or hemorrhoids, doctors said. Yuan’s General Hospital urologist Lee Tsung-hsi (李宗熹) said that he treated a 63-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙) who had been sitting motionless and holding off going to the bathroom, increasing her risk of bladder infection. Chao would drink beverages and not urinate for several hours while playing mahjong with friends and family, especially when she was on a winning streak, afraid that using the bathroom would ruin her luck, he said. She had
MUST REMAIN FREE: A Chinese takeover of Taiwan would lead to a global conflict, and if the nation blows up, the world’s factories would fall in a week, a minister said Taiwan is like Prague in 1938 facing Adolf Hitler; only if Taiwan remains free and democratic would the world be safe, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) said in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. The ministry on Saturday said Corriere della Sera is one of Italy’s oldest and most read newspapers, frequently covers European economic and political issues, and that Wu agreed to an interview with the paper’s senior political analyst Massimo Franco in Taipei on Jan. 3. The interview was published on Jan. 26 with the title “Taiwan like Prague in 1938 with Hitler,” the ministry
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