By Crystal Hsu / Staff reporterSindhorn Midtown in Thailand, a hospitality brand owned by the quasi-governmental Crown Property Bureau, is courting Taiwanese tourists, who on average travel to the nation twice a year, top officials in Taipei said. About 680,000 Taiwanese visit Thailand each year, with repeat travelers accounting for 45 percent, driven mainly by those seeking to escape the hustle and bustle of modern city life on a relatively affordable budget, Sindhorn Midtown general manager Jee Hoong Tan said in an exclusive interview with the Taipei Times this week. Sindhorn Midtown, a lifestyle hotel of 344 rooms and suites, is seeking to take advantage of the booming business potential when it starts operations in March. The hotelier flew to Taipei this week to visit local shipping and computer companies to promote stays at the Sindhorn Midtown for business and personal travel. Sindhorn Midtown is a Thai hospitality brand that aims to develop more properties, Tan said.

Citing the Regulations on Civil Servants’ Performance Evaluation for Year-end Bonuses (公務人員年終考績辦法), DPP Kaohsiung City Councilor Huang Wen-yi (黃文益) said that civil servants are eligible to apply for year-end bonuses and other performance-based incentives after working into December. However, Wang’s resignation also drew criticism from KMT Kaohsiung City Council caucus convener Tseng Chun-chieh (曾俊傑), who said that he only learned about it from the morning news. The lack of notification was “disrespectful” to the city council and leaving the day after the budget was finalized was “very abrupt,” Tseng said. The lack of notification was “disrespectful” to the city council and leaving the day after the budget was s finalized “is very abrupt,” Tseng said. He added that he found it worrying that Han’s campaign team could not wait one more week — the city council goes on recess on Thursday next week — before calling on city government personnel.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) said that EasyCard Corp is also planning a rider rebate program, rewarding users with a free trip on the MRT or Taipei City buses once they accrue enough points on the MRT. However, New Taipei City Department of Transportation Director Chung Ming-shih (鍾鳴時) yesterday said he had reservations about the TRTC plan. TRTC should not rashly implement the program when it has no statistical basis and no popular consensus for it, Chung said. TRTC is not just a for-profit company, it must also shoulder some social responsibilities, Chung said, adding that abolishing the 20 percent discount harms individuals taking mass transportation in Taipei and New Taipei City. “Should everything be as pretty as TRTC has painted it, then all is well,” he said.

By Lin Chia-nan / Staff reporterA team led by Academia Sinica researchers yesterday said that it had solved a mystery surrounding the causes of ankylosing spondylitis, a spinal disease that tends to affect men aged between 20 and 40. Nearly 70,000 Taiwanese are affected by the disease, three times as many men as women, Liu said. The gene had previously been linked to the disease, but it was not known how it was caused, Liu said. Given that existing drugs — levamisole and pamidronate — have proven effective in restricting TNAP, they could possibly be utilized to produce drugs that target the spinal disease, she added. With those samples, the team conducted experiments on mice to observe the generation of pathogenic bone cells and the effect of TNAP, she said.

Raids carried out over the past month had seized a total of US$11.04 million in counterfeit US$100 bills, making it one of the largest forgery cases in the nation’s history, CIB investigator Hsu Chao-pin (徐釗斌) said. The examination showed that the seized banknotes were from the same batch as money seized in a 2006 case where a Taipei branch of Mega Bank (兆豐銀行) lost NT$66 million (US$2.16 million at the current exchange rate) due to forged US$100 bills, Yeh said. Besides the fake US$100 bills, the raids also netted a batch of fake US dollar straps — bands for holding a single denomination of notes together — along with the engraving ink used, but Hsu said that they did not find the engraving molds or printing presses. Liao produced the bills and passed them on to Chueh, who allegedly sold the forged bills to friends at local markets for NT$350 to NT$450 each, investigators said, adding that Chueh told the buyers that the bills would pass for the real thing at currency exchange oulets in foreign nations. Chueh told the buyers that it was best to spend or exchange the bills at casinos, gambling dens, hotels and entertainment clubs in Southeast Asian nations, investigators said.

BloombergOPEC stood on the verge of a deal to reduce its official output target in line with recent production, but after six hours of fraught talks in Vienna on Thursday, ministers left the cartel’s headquarters before a final agreement was nailed down. Earlier in the day, ministers reached a deal in principle to deepen their output-cuts target by 500,000 barrels a day, delegates said. Even so, the cartel could not finalize the details of how to divide the adjustment between members before further discussions with partners from the wider OPEC+ group yesterday, delegates said. The new output target for Iraq, which has the worst record of implementing the existing cuts of any major oil producer in OPEC, was a particular sticking point, delegates said. OPEC+ last year agreed to reduce volumes by about 1.2 million barrels a day to eliminate a surplus and bolster crude prices.

AFP, SAN FRANCISCORide-sharing company Uber Technologies Inc, under fire around the world for its safety record, on Thursday said that it had tallied nearly 6,000 sexual assaults in the US over the past couple of years. Sexual assaults were reported on 0.00002 percent of trips, Uber said. “While these reports are rare, every report represents an individual who came forward to share an intensely painful experience,” it said. “Even one report is one too many.”Uber said that the figures also showed its drivers were attacked at about the same rate as passengers reporting sexual assault. The US report classified 5,981 sexual assaults ranging from “non-consensual sexual penetration” to unwanted kissing or touching.

The World Bank said its lending would decline over the “country partnership framework” plan, in line with reforms agreed on under a US$13 billion capital increase agreed to last year. The World Bank loaned China US$1.3 billion in the fiscal 2019 year ended June 30, down from about US$2.4 billion in fiscal 2017. “Lending levels may fluctuate up and down from year to year due to normal pipeline management based on project readiness,” the World Bank said in its plan. US lawmakers are also increasingly expressing concerns that US taxpayer funds loaned through the World Bank to China will enable human rights abuses and unfair economic competition with the US. In US Senate floor remarks on Thursday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley cited alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang associated with detention camps for Muslim Uighurs in criticizing the World Bank lending plan.

By Sean Lin / Staff reporterA motion sponsored by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus to have its “anti-annexation” bill proceed to a second reading was struck down yesterday, sealing its fate. The motion was filed at a legislative plenary session and put to a vote after the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus objected. As the current legislative session is to conclude at the end of this month, the bill is unlikely to be passed in the session. The DPP caucus, which proposed the amendments, said that the rules had infringed on personal freedom and contradicted the Constitution, which says that authorities must follow due legal procedure when detaining people. The amendment would lengthen the statute of limitations and the legal period to enforce punishment for people who have taken flight after having been charged with or convicted of crimes covered by the code.

By Chen Yu-fu and Dennis Xie / Staff reporter, with staff writerAn exhibition commemorating South Korea’s Gwangju Uprising opened in Taipei yesterday. The Kaohsiung Incident, also known as the Formosa Incident, took place on Dec. 10, 1979, when a demonstration organized by opposition politicians and Formosa Magazine to commemorate Human Rights Day turned violent. The Gwangju Uprising — also called the May 18 Democratic Uprising — against martial law took place in Gwangju, South Korea, in 1980. The exhibition demonstrated how to implement transitional justice at the right pace, she added. The exhibition runs until Dec. 22 at an open space across from the National Audit Office on Taipei’s Hangzhou N Road.

AFP, WASHINGTONUS House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday gave the green light to draft articles of impeachment against US President Donald Trump, as the embattled president vowed he would “win” the coming fight. By asking the US House Judiciary Committee chairman to draw up the charges, Democrat Pelosi signaled that a formal vote on impeaching the 45th president was all but assured. “Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to our founders and a heart full of love for America, today I am asking our chairman to proceed with articles of impeachment,” Pelosi said in a televised statement. Trump “has engaged in abuse of power, undermined our national security and jeopardized the integrity of our elections,” she said. “No bribery, no extortion, no obstruction of justice and no abuse of power,” McCarthy told reporters.

By Michael DanielsenA combination of the good old days and modern populism can be a superb cocktail for winning an election. The problem for the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) populist presidential candidate, Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), is that there are no good old days. A look at the KMT’s recent past exposes its political and economic failures. It would also be a challenge for the international community to separate Chinese attempts to promote Taiwan as Chinese from the KMT’s own policies. Taiwan shall live forward and understand itself looking backward — not like the KMT, which prefers to live in the past.

ENDANGERED OAKGiven the critical role wood plays in the production of spirits, protecting trees has become a common focal point. It’s also a good example of how spirits makers are becoming more ecologically aware. “Our interest in Garry Oak was initially a purely whiskey-focused one,” said Westland co-founder and Master Distiller Matt Hofmann. The distillery’s Garry Oak Project with land conservationist organization Forterra involves planting new trees throughout Washington state while protecting existing stands. As Maker’s Mark’s Environmental Champion (his real title), he conceded that the high climate cost of shipping spirits is something that — for now — can’t be avoided.

Second, from 2013 to last year, he was involved in many civil lawsuits, most of which were contract disputes. When the Wang espionage case broke in Australia, China took the lead in smearing the 26-year-old, calling him a fraudster with the full force of the communists, and with some help from Taiwan’s pan-blue camp, to discredit his allegations. Beijing even released trial footage allegedly showing Wang confessing to fraud — only to be met with disbelief in Australia. Yet, China’s reaction to a certain degree validates the success of the joint efforts of Five Eyes and Taiwan. Yu Kung is a Taiwanese businessman operating in China.

By Kao Shih-ching / Staff reporterWisdom Marine Lines Co (慧洋海運), the nation’s largest dry bulk shipping company by fleet size, yesterday said it is upbeat about next year, as it expects market volatility to ease this quarter and demand to improve as rules imposing higher standards on sulfur from ship exhausts take effect. Unexpected market volatility came from China’s ban on coal for heating this winter, Indonesia announcing a ban on nickel exports from Jan. 1, and the US and China’s delayed negotiation on wheat purchases due to a canceled APEC meeting in Chile last month, the firm told an investors’ conference in Taipei. “They all had a negative outlook for the dry bulk shipping industry this quarter, with spot shipping rates declining on market expectations of lower freight volumes for the three commodities,” Wisdom said, adding that the fourth quarter should have been a peak season. Wisdom plans to take delivery of seven new vessels next year, two of which would be equipped with scrubbers to meet clients’ needs, it said. Net profit rose 56 percent annually to NT$1.75 billion (US$57.4 million) for the first three quarters, or earnings per share of NT$2.76, company data showed.