■ Diplomacy
Paraguay ties firm: MOFA
Diplomatic relations between the Taiwan and Paraguay remain firm and solid, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Richard Shih (石瑞琦) said yesterday. Shih was responding to media reports that China has been lobbying Brazil to pressure Paraguay to switch its diplomatic recognition to Beijing. Shih said the reports were speculative. He said Taiwan-Paraguay relations are in good shape, noting that President Nicanor Duarte just concluded a state visit to Taipei late last month. After his return to Asuncion, Shih said, Duarte told the Paraguayan press that his visit was very fruitful and that the two countries will negotiate and sign a free-trade agreement within a year. Asked whether Paraguay is likely to yield to pressure from its Southern Common Market allies to switch its diplomatic allegiance, Shih said Duarte has reiterated on many public occasions that Paraguay's diplomatic ties with Taipei have contributed much to the country's economic development over the past decades.
■ Child Abuse
Yu speaks out
Premier Yu Shyi-kun issued a directive yesterday on the building of a nationwide information and rescue network for the protection of abused children. Speaking at the Executive Yuan, Yu said his heart went out to children who had been physically and mentally abused or had been deprived of human rights as a result of family crises. Yu instructed government agencies to address the matter by having specialists make field trips to communities and households as a first step toward building a nationwide network to protect youngsters. The premier said authorities must intervene to save mentally and physically abused children from families and institutions where economic, marital or social problems had made their environments hell.
■ Communications
People phone China a lot
China was the top destination last year for international calls placed from Taiwan, followed by the US and the Philippines, according to figures released yesterday by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. The statistics showed that Taiwanese people placed 3.08 billion minutes' worth of international calls last year -- an average of 8.43 million minutes per day, up 42.8 percent from the previous year's level. China was the destination for 0.99 billion minutes' worth of calls, or 32.1 percent of the total, followed by the US at 290 million minutes, the Philippines at 270 million minutes, Hong Kong and Macau at 240 million minutes and Thailand at 210 million minutes. A large number of Filipino and Thai laborers work in the country, contributing to those countries' high rankings.
■ Politics
Chen to fete lawyers
To express his appreciation to nearly 800 lawyers who aided the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the recount of votes cast in the presidential election, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will hold a series of banquets in Taichung, Kaohsiung and Taipei on July 4, 7 and 9, respectively. Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦), director of the DPP's Information and Culture Department, announced yesterday that Chen would attend the banquets to thank the lawyers for their efforts in the 9-day recount, which set a record for the largest number of lawyers to be involved in a single legal proceeding.
■ Politics
DPP candidates queried
Questions have been raised about some of the 10 candidates the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)nominated on Tuesday for a Kaohsiung City Council by-election. Five candidates are family members or associates of three former city councilors convicted of election fraud in connection with the election of former City Council speaker Chu An-hsuing (朱安雄). Among the DPP's 10 candidates are Hsiao Yeh-chuan (蕭雅捐), who is the wife of former city councilor Chang Ching-chuan (張清泉). Chang was sentenced to 26 months in prison and expelled from the DPP in the vote-buying scandal. Candidate Chao Li-wen (趙麗文) is the wife of former city councilor Kao Tzeng-ying (高宗英) who was sentenced to a six-month jail term. DPP Legislator Lin Chin-hsing (林進興), who was cleared of charges, arranged for his sister Lin Mei-ling (林美玲) and his aides Lin Wu-chung (林武忠) and Cheng Kuang-feng (鄭光豐) to run in the by-
election. Lin Chin-hsing's ex-wife Chang Wen-hsiu (章玟琇), a former city councilor, was convicted of vote-buying in the speaker-election scandal.
■ Society
Man survives 12-story fall
An elderly man who plum-meted 12 stories to the ground after he fell from his apartment balcony while changing a lightbulb sur-vived with only minor bruises, reports said yesterday. Chang Shih-chi, 68, told cable network CTiTV he had lost his balance after suffering an electric shock, but his fall was broken as he bounced off a canvas awning, electric wiring and
a parked car. "The patient fell from the 12th floor to the ground without suffering major injuries. This is a miracle," said the doctor who treated Chang. TV footage showed Chang walking around a hospital ward in Taichung.
■ Society
Rules eased on spouses
Rules on residence appli-cations by Chinese spouses of Taiwanese have been eased after the Bureau of Immigration agreed to simplify the process, a bureau spokesman said yesterday. In the future, undisputed applications will be approved immediately after being examined by
the bureau, the spokesman said, adding that qualifying documents will not have to
be further processed in a joint screening meeting
and applicants will not have to go through an interview with immigration officials. According to the spokesman, the first joint screening meeting was held May 18 to scrutinize a total of 704 applications. Except for a small number of disputed cases, most of the applica-tions were approved at the meeting, he said.
■ Society
Andy going to rehab
The actor known as Andy (安迪) faces a 21-day drug rehabilitation program starting next Tuesday. Authorities have issued a summons requiring him to report that day to the Shihlin District Prosecutors' Office, from where he will be transferred to the Taipei Detention House's rehabili-tation center in Panchiao. The summons stems from an incident last December in which Andy and his wife were videotaped taking drugs and having sex in a private KTV room. Six suspects who tried to use the video to blackmail the couple have been arrested and indicted. The blackmail attempt led prosecutors to conduct an analysis of Andy's hair, which confirmed that he had taken the drug MDMA (ecstasy). Andy's wife was cleared of having used drugs.
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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