■ Weather
Tourists crowd Mt. Hohuan
More than 20,000 tourists flocked to Mount Hohuan in central Taiwan yesterday in order to see the largest snow accumulations on the mountain in years. The influx of tourists had caused a traffic jam as long as 30km on the road leading to the mountain. The cold mass that has been hovering over the nation the past few days has caused continuous snow on the mountain. Crowds of tourists flocked to mountain on the weekend as the snow accumulation reached 10cm. Yesterday's severe traffic congestion on the mountain was not relieved until 5pm, when the police began prohibiting vehicles from entering. A number of ecotourists was forced to return without seeing the snow. Meanwhile, about 30 children visiting the mountain suffered from high-altitude sickness but were in stable condition after being admitted to first-aid stations, according to tourism officials.
■ Crime
Police seize firearms
Police nabbed two suspected firearms dealers, including a Kaohsiung Harbor Bureau staff member, and seized a large stash of smuggled firearms in a pre-dawn raid yesterday in Kaohsiung. The two suspects were identified as Tsai Ming-chang (蔡昌明), 45, a sailor with the harbor bureau, and Lin Yung-yuan (林勇源), 49, who is believed to be a firearms broker. Police also seized 15 pistols, 828 rounds of ammunition and more than 10 bank passbooks. Police said they suspect that nearly 100 guns smuggled through Tsai may have flowed onto the black market. After more than five months of tracking, police managed to nab Tsai and Lin while they were allegedly trading smuggled firearms at a back alley in Kaohsiung's Kushan district at around 3am. Police uncovered an Italian pistol and 80 bullets in Lin's travel van. They then raided Tsai's residence in the vicinity and discovered 397 rounds of ammunition in a secret cave in the garage.
■ Finance
Chen Li-an runs into trouble
Chen Li-an (陳履安), a former president of the Control Yuan, admitted in Beijing yesterday that his garment company in China faces serious financial woes. Chen, 65, said his business in the southern province of Guangdong faces cash-shortage problems as certain people have failed to honor their investment promises. "I have traveled to Beijing to seek assistance to bail out my company," Chen said. "I have managed to get a loan of 3 million yuan (about US$670,000) to temporarily relieve my company's financial difficulties," he added. Chen, known for his devotion to Buddhism, said he still needs aid from various quarters. He is set to return to Guangdong today to discuss with his employees how to resolve the firm's financial problems. Chen, who also once served as the Taiwan's minister of economic affairs and as minister of national defense under the KMT, said he never learned of the hardships of private businesses during his days in Taiwan.
■ Defense
New laws ranked as top story
The implementation of two new defense laws to integrate military command and administration has been selected as Taiwan's top military story of the year, the Military Journalism Research Association announced yesterday. Members of the association picked Minister of National Defense Tang Yao-ming's (湯曜明) landmark visit to the US in March to attend a defense summit as the year's second most important military news story. Agencies
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