■Agriculture
Vegetable center holds meet
About 50 experts from eight Southeast Asian nations gathered in Tainan yesterday for a four-day meeting to brainstorm ways to help eradicate the malnutrition faced by the poor in the region, said Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC) yesterday. Tainan-based AVRDC was the host of the regional planning meeting for the project on "Promoting Utilization of Indigenous Vegetables for Improved Nutrition of Resource-Poor Households in Asia," funded by the Asian Development Bank. "The first phase of the project was more focused on the assembly, characterization and regeneration of the materials to promote indigenous vegetables," said Liwayway Engle, head of AVRDC's genetic resources and seed unit who acts as the project coordinator.
■ Sculpture
Hualien to host art festival
Hualien County and Seravezza, an Italian city renowned for its stone sculptures, will co-host an exhibition of stone sculptures in Hualien in October this year, Johnson Shen (沈中元), director of the county's culture bureau, announced yesterday. During the month-long exhibition, entitled "2003 Hualien International Stone Sculpture Festival: A Party for Two Stone Cities," ten stone sculptors, five from Taiwan and five from Italy, will chisel their works in Hualien. Hualien produces high-quality stones that are the favorites of stone sculptors. Seravezza, also well-known for its excellent stones, is a haven for stone sculptors from around the world, Shen said. The procedures of the artists' chiseling their works will be aired live online at stone.ccl.hlc.edu.tw, a Web site run by the National Taiwan University of Arts.
■ Police
Hseih names female chief
The chief of the presidential residence police authority, Hsieh Feng-feng (謝芬芬) has been named head of the Ilan County Police Department, Ilan County Chief Liu Shou-cheng (劉守成) said yesterday. The appointment, recommended by National Police Administration Director-General Wang Ginn-wang (王進旺), will make Hsieh the first woman police officer ever appointed to be head of any county or city police department. Hsieh became an inspector of the National Police Administration when President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was elected. She had previously served as a squadron commander of the Taipei Municipal Juvenile Affairs Department when Chenwas mayor. She has also served as the chief of the presidential residence's bodyguards in addition to her NPA duties.
■ Drugs
Taiwan's efforts recognized
Taiwan's anti-drug efforts have been recognized internationally, Ministry of Justice (MOJ) officials said yesterday. Taiwan is not on a list of the main drug production and transshipment countries published Jan. 23 by the US government, the officials said, adding that it was the third consecutive year that Taiwan has not appeared on the list. A total of 23 countries were listed by the US government as the world's main drug producers and transshipment centers this year -- Afghanistan, the Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Myanmar, China, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Thailand, Venezuela and Vietnam. The MOJ will continue to implement the government's anti-drug policies and measures, the officials added.
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