■ Crime
Assassination plotter nabbed
Lai Chu-hsing (賴注醒) was arrested by prosecutors yesterday for allegedly planning to assassinate President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). Police said Lai had recently distributed flyers calling for the establishment of a revolutionary party to assassinate Chen. Lai was invited on several TV programs to talk about his assassination plan. Lai was arrested yesterday afternoon as he was on his way to a TV station to participate in a talk show. Lai told reporters that the best time to assassinate Chen would be during the May 20 inauguration ceremony. The 40-year old Lai is reportedly an entrepreneur who sells water.
■ Society
Four missing at sea
Four people were reported missing yesterday after a ferry boat overturned off Hsiaoliuchiu island, officials said. The boat shuttling between the fishing harbor of Tungkang in Pingtung County and the island capsized at 6:15am as it approached the island, the National Rescue Command Center said. "Airborne and maritime search has been underway," an official said. He said one sailor had been rescued from the vessel after he managed to grab hold of a log and stay afloat for at least an hour before being plucked to safety by another boat. Missing are the skipper, another sailor and two passengers. Hundreds of racing pigeons being transported on the ferry died.
■ Expatriates
Heritage activities in LA
The annual Taiwanese-American Heritage Week kicked off in the greater Los Angeles area on Saturday, with hundreds of members of major Taiwanese associations joining a riverbed clean-up campaign with other Asian-Pacific ethnic groups as part of the celebrations of Asia-Pacific Heritage Month. Huang Wen-ku, president of the Taiwanese-American Citizens Association, that a series of cultural, sports and culinary activities will be staged during Taiwanese-American Heritage Week to promote multicultural exchanges, encourage Taiwanese-Americans to take part in mainstream US social activities and promote traditional Taiwanese folk arts, crafts and festivities.
■ Politics
Soong mahjong jibe denied
The People First Party (PFP) yesterday denied that its chairman, James Soong (宋楚瑜), left a demonstration on April 10 to play mahjong. Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) last week suggested that the PFP chairman left the protesters -- who were calling for a recount and an investigation into an assassination attempt on the president -- to play mahjong before the demonstration became violent. PFP spokesman Hsieh Kong-ping (謝公秉) yesterday detailed Soong's activities on April 10 and said the party would not rule out filing a defamation suit against Lee.
■ Diplomacy
Equipment donated
Taiwan has donated a batch of information-technology equipment worth US$20,000 to the Paraguayan government in a bid to help upgrade its administrative efficiency, an official from the Republic of China embassy said on Saturday. Ambassador Bing Yen (顏秉璠) delivered the materials, including 16 computers, digital cameras, fax machines and printers, to the Paraguayan government at a dinner party hosted by President Nicanor Duarte Furtos on April 26. Duarte expressed his heartfelt gratitude for Taiwan's generous donation.
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