■Diplomacy
Chen calls Paraguay leader
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday congratulated Nicanor Duarte Frutos on his winning Paraguay's presidential election, and invited Duarte to visit Taiwan. "I hope through our mutual effort, the traditional friendship between Taiwan and Paraguay will become closer," Chen told Duarte in a telephone conversation. Duarte invited Chen to attend his inauguration on Aug. 15. "After things have settled down, I would love to make an official visit to Taiwan," Duarte told Chen.
■ Diplomacy
Chen hails Mongolia ties
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday described the exchange of representative offices with Mongolia as highly encouraging and said he was overwhelmed by the diplomatic achievement. Meeting a group of Mongolian prosecutors -- led by State Public Prosecutor General M. Altankhuyag -- at the Presidential Office, Chen said he was pleased that the two countries finally opened liaison offices after more than six years of negotiations.
■ Cross-strait ties
Kinmen patrols stepped up
Coastal patrol authorities on Kinmen have increased patrols in the waters around the outlying island to prevent severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) from spreading from China to Kinmen. Fu Chin-jung (傅錦榮), a commander of the Kinmen Patrol Team, said two patrol boats have just arrived in Kinmen to join the patrol team, which enforces the law and regulations governing civilian exchanges between the people on Kinmen and China. Under the government's three small links policy, people on Kinmen can directly do business with their Chinese counterparts from certain ports. The patrol team hopes to prevent the spread of SARS from China to Kinmen through illegal contacts, such as smuggling.
■ Information
Foreigners to get leaflets
Taipei City's Bureau of Labor Affairs has said it will print leaflets in four languages providing information on SARS for the benefit of foreign workers. The leaflets, printed in Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese and English, will be offered free to domestic employers and foreign workers at various sites in the city where foreign workers frequent. Bureau officials said foreigners could also get information online at www.bola.taipei.gov.tw. The Cabinet-level Council of Labor Affairs also opened hot lines in the four languages over the weekend to offer free SARS-related consultations for foreign workers. The numbers are: 0800-885-885 for English, 0800-885-995 for Thai, 0800-885-958 for Indonesian and 0800-017-858 for Vietnamese.
■ Health
More face masks donated
Overseas Taiwanese have donated more than 90,000 face masks to provide safeguards for physicians and nurses combating severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), said deputy chief of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission Wu Hsin-hsing (吳新興) yesterday. Wu expressed his gratitude to California-based Taiwanese and their counterparts in Thailand who have launched a campaign to transport over 90,000 masks to Taiwan to help contain the spread of SARS.
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