■ Fisheries
Coast guard provides escort
A coast guard ship set sail from Kaohsiung for the North Pacific yesterday on a fisheries escort mission, coast guard officials announced yesterday. The 496-ton Hsunhu No. 3 is scheduled to return home on July 27, the officials said. The mission is one of the three to the North Pacific planned for this year, with the main purpose being to maintain order in the North Pacific fishing grounds and provide emergency aid to Taiwanese fishing boats operating there, they said.
■ Global Trade
Tolerance urged at the WTO
Taiwan joined South Korea and Thailand on Thursday in emphasizing the importance of "tolerance and transparency" in the multilateral Doha Round Trade Negotiations. Speaking at a meeting of the WTO's Trade Negotiation Committee presided over by WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi, John Deng (鄧振中), Taiwan's deputy permanent representative to the WTO, said that Taiwan and many other WTO members are seriously concerned about the fact that a few WTO members have tried to monopolize some important trade talks while the voices of other WTO countries might not be heard. These members are identified as the "five interest parties," or FIPs, consisting of the US, the EU, Australia, India and Brazil. During the meeting, Deng also stressed the importance of equilibrium in the negotiations, saying that otherwise, it will be very difficult to complete the process of the Doha Development Agenda. Without concrete progress being made in the process of the Doha New Round of trade talks, Supachai said at the gathering that "we are close to a crisis." According to Supachai, the process of the Doha Round might continue to be delayed in the future.
■ Cross-strait Ties
Ma panders to panda ploy
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that reports Taiwan will get two pandas from China have nothing to do with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan's (連戰) visit, and he urged the country not to politicize the panda matter. Ma, a KMT vice chairman, said that the Taipei City Zoo has been working for years to prepare for welcoming the pandas, and the matter is by no means related to Lien's visit. Noting that the purpose of a city zoo is to conserve as well as display wild animals, Ma said the Taipei City Zoo should strive to make itself like any other zoo in the world. It would be a nice thing for both Taipei and Taiwan if the the zoo was able to have pandas, Ma said. The issue of whether Taiwan will accept pandas from China is quite simple if people don't politicize the issue, Ma said.
■ Civil Law
Lawmaker licked in lawsuit
Taipei District Court yesterday ruled that People First Party Legislator Diane Lee (李慶安) and a man named Cheng Ko-jung (鄭可榮) must pay Tu Hsing-che (涂醒哲), the former minister of the Department of Health, NT$600,000 for their false allegation that Tu licked a man's ear at a KTV parlor. The verdict said Lee and Cheng's words damaged Tu's reputation, so they must pay him compensation. Former DOH personnel department chief Tu Hau-lin (屠豪麟) was later found guilty for sexually harassing Cheng Ko-jung (鄭可榮), but Cheng mistook Tu Hau-lin for Tu Hsing-che, and he asked Lee to hold a press conference for him to accuse Tu Hsing-che of harassing Cheng.
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