■ Crime
Yakuza heavyweights banned
Five Japanese yakuza ringleaders have been declared persona non grata and banned from entering Taiwan, police said yesterday. The announce-ment is part of a new crackdown on organized crime launched by the National Police Admin-istration (NPA) late last month, police said. The five yakuza figures, including Matsuo Maki, deputy head of the Tokyo-based underworld ring known as Sumiyoshikai, traveled to Taiwan late last month to attend the funeral of Hsu Hai-ching (許海清), a local mob godfather nicknamed "Mosquito." With the assistance of the immigration authorities and Taiwan's representative office in Japan, the NPA's Criminal Investigation Bureau discovered that the five yakuza figures used pseudonyms to visit Taiwan to attend the funeral. NPA officials said they decided to ban the yakuza members from visiting Taiwan in the future in an attempt to prevent them from colluding with local criminal rings in committing cross-border crimes.
■ Conservation
`Green' engineering urged
Taiwan must be built with ecological conservation in mind, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) told a group of engineers yesterday. In a written statement read at the annual conference of the Taipei-based Chinese Institute of Engineers, the president urged members of the institute to develop engineering technologies that are environmentally friendly and which can sustain development. The institute's annual conference coincided with a forum on engineering technology between Taiwan and Japan. Founded in 1912, the Chinese Institute of Engineers has 6,151 individual members and 79 institute members.
■ Food
Hu's pitch goes over well
Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) got a tip of the hat from the chairman of the Taichung Pastry Industry Association yesterday for his excellent job as a pitchman for suncakes in Beijing last week. Yiu Yiu-yi (游有義), chairman of the Taichung Pastry Industry Association, said that Taichung City's pastry business could grow five times over if Hu continued being a spokesman for the dessert, which originated in Taichung. Yiu thanked Hu for his presenting suncakes, a popular Taiwanese cake made of flaky pastry with sweet fillings, in Beijing while attending the United Cities and Local Governments World Council meeting, which was held on June 8-10. At present, the annual turnover of the pastry business in Taichung reaches about NT$1 billion (US$31.87 million).
■ Education
Economics to help teachers
Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) said yesterday that the issue of jobless teachers will be sorted out taking economics into account. Tu made the remarks while inspecting dilapidated school buildings at a Kaohsiung elementary school, one day after more than 2,000 jobless teachers assembled in a street protest in Taipei to ask that the Ministry of Education raise the ratio of teachers to students, and cut the number of students in a class to allow more employment opportunities for them. Tu said that those who protested were intern teachers, and that their unemployment has structural problems. He noted that currently, the number of students in elementary and junior-high schools is decreasing, and that the supply-and-demand question needs an overall review before creating more job opportunities.
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