■ Foreign affairs
Powell supports `one China'
Washington reiterated its support for the "one-China" policy yesterday. US Secretary of State Colin Powell made the comments in a telephone conversation with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing (李肇星), the official Xinhua News Agency said. "The US side reiterated that it would abide by the `one China' policy," Xinhua said. The two sides also spoke about Iraq and other issues, Xinhua said, but did not elaborate. In President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) inauguration speech on Thursday, Chen used conciliatory language aimed at soothing China.
■ Foreign policy
Iraq plan upsets pop star
Popular singer Lou Ta-you (劉大佑) cut his US passport into pieces during a rock concert to protest a reported suggestion by two US lawmakers that Taiwan send troops to Iraq. After singing a song, Lou sat on a chair on stage and slowly read a newspaper report about the suggestion. He then used a pair of scissors to cut his passport to cheers from the mostly young audience at a university in Hsinchu on Saturday night, according to a local cable news channel. "They say we should attack Iraq and then they would protect us," Lou, wearing his trademark black T-shirt, told the audience. "This would be a dirty trade-off." Lou, who holds both Taiwanese and US citizenship, said he would be afraid for his safety if Taiwan sends troops. "I am as jittery as a mouse," laughed Lou, who is known as the "Protest Singer" because of the political themes of many of his songs. "I'm afraid that a stranger with an Arabian accent might come over to me on the plane and ask to check my passport."
■ Earthquakes
Hualien gets a jolt
An earthquake with a magnitude of 4.2 on the Richter scale jolted the Hualien area early yesterday morning, according to the Central Weather Bureau. A bureau report said the quake occurred at 4:25am, with its epicenter located 9.5km southwest of a seismic station in Hualien County at a depth of 19.2km. The quake had an intensity of 3.0 in Hualien County; 2.0 in Nantou; 1.0 in Taichung County; and 1.0 in Ilan County, the report added.
■ Cross-strait ties
Atlas appears pro-Taiwan
Although China continues to claim that Taiwan is part of China, an atlas sold in Beijing's state-owned Xinhua Bookstore features the two sides of the Taiwan Strait as two separate countries, a Chinese daily newspaper said yesterday. The Chinese-language Beijing News reported that the pocket-size world atlas is published by US-based Merriam-Webster Publishing Co. The daily said the atlas uses white to represent China, while coloring all neighboring countries, including Taiwan, pale orange. Meanwhile, the daily went on, Taiwan is featured elsewhere in the atlas, where Taiwan is colored white and its neighboring countries, including China, are colored pale orange. The page also carries words describing Taiwan's national title as the Republic of China (ROC) and displays the ROC's "white sun in a blue sky on a crimson ground" national flag. The paper quoted a Beijing municipal customs service official as saying that the atlas is contraband because all publications that feature the two sides of the Taiwan Strait as "one China, one Taiwan" or "two Chinas" are prohibited from entering the Chinese book market. The official said Chinese law enforcement authorities will step up a crackdown on such publications.
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