■ Politics
TSU won't support KMT
Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Chairman Huang Chu-wen (黃主文) said yesterday that it was impossible for the TSU to support a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-approved candidate
to run for the legislative speakership. Huang stressed that the TSU will uphold its goal of giving the pan-green camp a solid majority in
the legislature in order
to stabilize the political situation, develop the economy, and eventually strengthen the nation. It
was also recently rumored that Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) has mended his relationship with former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝).
■ Society
Warning of birth troubles
The population aged over
65 will increase to about
7 million by 2051, said
a report by the Council
of Economic Planning
and Development released yesterday. According to the report, the population aged above 65 this year will mount to 2.14 million. Fifty years later, it will increase to 6.95 million. An aging population is an inevitable trend, and will cause financial pressure
on the government, society
and families in the future,
the council said. The government should make
a greater effort to increase
the birth rate, it said. The report said the main reason for diseased children is that one-quarter of women over 40 years old are unmarried. If it aims to increase the number of children born
on average by each woman from 1.2 to 1.6 in 2021, the government must encourage citizens to get married, the council said.
■ Diplomacy
Scholarships awarded
The nation's top liaison officer in the Philippines yesterday met with 10 Philippine nationals
who have been awarded scholarships to study Mandarin and Taiwan's cultures. Wu Hsin-hsing (吳新興), representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines, congratulated the scholarship holders and hoped they would become cultural ambassadors
and cement bilateral ties between the two countries after completing their studies. The 10 recipients -- all officials from government agencies or academic organizations -- will study at Mandarin centers run by universities around the nation for
one year. The universities include National Taiwan University, National Chengchi University, National Taiwan Normal University, National Cheng Kung University and Ming Chuan University. A police officer with expertise
in narcotics investigations
said that learning Mandarin would enable him to handle cases more easily when Chinese speakers were involved.
■ Crime
Another `tourist' detained
The fourth member of a 17-strong group of Chinese tourists who arrived in
the country earlier this
month but went missing
after arriving at CKS International Airport
was detained by police yesterday. Chen Junyun,
37, of Fujian Province, was arrested by aviation police when he showed up at the airport attempting to buy
a ticket out of the country. Chen said during his arraignment that he arrived in the country on a China Airlines flight on July 13. He said a "strange man" had led the group to Taipei. He told police that he only wanted to find some short-term work but failed, so he decided to leave. He was turned over to the Taoyuan Prosecutor's Office.
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