The Nov. 23 protest march staged in Taipei by some 100,000 farmers and fishermen, sparked by outrage over the government's plans for managing the credit departments of farmers' and fishermen's associations, has been chosen by the editorial chiefs of local news media as the top domestic news story of the year.
The newsmen also listed what they believe to be the other major news events or issues as follows:
A China Airlines Boeing 747-200 passenger plane en route from Taipei to Hong Kong crashed into the Taiwan Strait near the Penghu Islands on May 25, killing all 206 passengers and 19 crew.
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou
Taiwan became a member of the WTO on Jan. 1, resulting in all trade practices being conducted under the WTO framework.
A WTO-mandated liquor tax led to a drastic price hike for rice wine and sparked a surge in production of bootleg liquor that caused several deaths.
A serious drought in northern Taiwan in the first half of this year exposed serious water-resources management problems.
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) defined cross-Taiwan Strait relations as "one country on each side" in a teleconference speech to the annual conference of the World Federation of Taiwanese Associations in Tokyo onAug. 3.
The Cabinet announced in early November that it would agree in principle to allow charter flights between Taipei and Shanghai with a stopover in a third place to provide convenience for Taiwanese businessmen returning from China during the Lunar New Year holidays.
The raising of national health insurance premiums from Sept. 1 caused much discontent among civic organizations and unions.
First lady Wu Shu-chen (吳淑珍) was awarded the Democratic Service Medal on Sept. 25 by the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization partially funded by the US Congress, during a visit to Capitol Hill.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods