■ Games
Ace Go player visits
Cho U (張栩), a Taiwan-born ace Go player based in Japan who won the coveted "Honinbo" title in July, returned to Taipei yesterday for a three-day visit. This is the 23-year-old first homecoming visit since he left for Japan 13 years ago to pursue a career in the ancient strategy game that is also known as "encirclement chess." Cho is accompanied by his two mentors, Lin Hai-feng (林海峰) and Wu Ching-yuan (吳清源). The trio will attend the opening ceremony of a national Go tournament and will offer tips to local young Go players. Cho won the Honinbo title for the first time in July, making him the second-youngest Honinbo holder in Japanese Go history. Cho became a professional Go player in 1994. With his youth and good looks, he is one of the five most popular Go players in Japan. President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will meet Cho and his two mentors on Monday and Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) will present them with honorary citizen status in recognition of their achievements.
■ Tourism
More tax-refund stores OK'd
More than 20 department stores around the country, including eight in Taipei, have been approved as tax-return shops as the government prepares to implement a new system as part of a program to boost tourism, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. The ministry also unveiled the TRS logo that will be displayed in all shops under the program. Officials said that the move to permit 5 percent business tax refunds for tourists is part of the government's efforts to double the number of tourist arrivals by 2008. Foreign tourists who spend more than NT$3,000 in the same TRS department store in a day and take the goods out of the country within 30 days will be eligible for the refunds, providing they complete the necessary forms in the shop and then get the forms endorsed at the airport before they depart.
■ Diplomacy
Allies back UN bid
Two more allies voiced their support on Thursday for the country's bid to join the UN. Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore said in his speech to the UN General Assembly that there is no legitimacy in excluding Taiwan from the world body, adding that the structure and the function of the UN is to give all countries more responsibility and to avoid excluding them. Dominica Prime Minister Pierre Charles said that Taiwan provides much-needed assistance to countries ravaged by war, which shows its willingness to help needy countries.
■ Travel
Warning given about China
The Center for Disease Control yesterday warned tourists heading for China to avoid wading in freshwater, saying they risked being infected by parasites that cause Schistosomiasis. Worms known as schistotome infect tens of thousands of farmers each year along the Yangtze River. But infections have increased this year, the center said. It cautioned people against swimming in rivers or walking barefoot in rice paddies when traveling to central China, especially near Dongting Lake in Hunan Province. Several Taiwanese have returned home with the parasite, it said. The larval form of the parasite, known in China as the "bloodsucking parasite," lives in freshwater snails. After it burrows into the human skin, it moves into the urinary tract, liver or intestine, where the adult worms develop and lay eggs. The worms can cause serious tissue damage.
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