■ Society
Iruan's uncle gives ground
The Taiwanese-Brazilian boy Iruan Ergui Wu's (吳憶樺) Taiwanese uncle Wu Huo-yen (吳火眼) yesterday said that he will escort Iruan to Brazil in person. Wu said that he would escort Iruan to Brazil in person today if Iruan's Brazilian grandmother still refused to come to Taiwan to pick up the boy. However, today's handover of the boy may still be unsuccessful, because Wu also said that it is not necessary to take Iruan to the Kaohsiung District Court as judge Liao Cheng-hsiung (廖正雄) demanded on Friday. Liao arrived at the Wu residence to enforce the law last Friday, but the family refused to hand over the boy because they said the legal process had not been completed. Liao then ordered Wu to hand over Iruan at the Kaohsiung District Court before 11am today or face being jailed until the Wus comply with the court order. Brazil Business Center Director Paulo Pinto said that he would be more than happy to issue a visa to Wu if he files an application today.
■ Diplomacy
Kiribati president to visit
Kiribati President Anote Tong is due in Taiwan this week for his first visit to the country since his government switched diplomatic recognition from Beijing to Taipei last year, the foreign ministry said yesterday. Tong is scheduled to arrive today for a five-day visit that will include a meeting with President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), with whom he will "exchange views on international relations and cooperation projects," a ministry official said. Tong will sign an agreement on agricultural cooperation with Taiwan and tour economic and agricultural development establishments here, the official said. The visit will be of "significance to the development of relations between Taiwan and Kiribati," he said.
■ Bird Flu
More chickens slaughtered
Some 230,000 chickens in seven out of eight farms where a less virulent strain of bird flu was discovered have been culled over the past three days, an official said yesterday. "The slaughtering has been completed except for one farm in Nantou," Yeh Ying (葉瑩), deputy director of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, told reporters. Authorities Friday ordered the slaughter at the farms along the west coast after the fresh outbreaks of the bird flu were found. Around 98,000 ducks and chickens in southern Taiwan had been slaughtered following earlier outbreaks last month. Meanwhile, the Council of Agriculture is scheduled to buy 500,000 chickens today to help stabilize prices, which plunged after bird flu was found in the nation.
■ Trade
Mission to Latin America
The Bureau of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Economic Affairs is organizing a trade mission that will visit Latin America from late next month to early April, bureau officials said yesterday. The mission is scheduled to leave Taiwan on March 20 for Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Argentina and will return home on April 4, the officials said. Mexico is Taiwan's largest market in Latin America, with Taiwan exporting US$887-million-worth of goods to the country last year, while Colombia, Argentina and Peru rank fourth, sixth and seventh, respectively, with exports of US$115 million to US$128 million, the officials said. Given that the imports of the four nations from Taiwan accounted for less than 1 percent of their totals, the officials said, there are many opportunities to explore. The mission will hold talks with local enterprises and visit local business groups.
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