■ Earthquakes
Temblor felt around nation
An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale jolted Taiwan yesterday, but there was no immediate report of damage or casualties. The quake occurred at 9:16am with its epicenter 63km east of Hualien, 11.7km under the sea, the Seismological Observation Center said. The quake was felt all over the island. The MRT system in Taipei suspended operation for a few minutes.
■ Crime
Coast guard rescues skipper
The coast guard has rescued a skipper kidnapped by a Chinese fishing boat after a collision, officials said yesterday. The coast guard also brought back 11 Chinese crew and two fishing vessels to Penghu for questioning, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement. Lu Ching-man (呂清滿), skipper of a 68-tonne fishing boat based in Penghu, was kidnapped by the crew of one of the Chinese boats after the two craft reportedly collided in the Taiwan Strait on Monday morning, it said. Three coast guard patrol boats rushed to the scene upon receiving a mayday distress call from other sailors on the Taiwanese boat.
■ Culture
Huge museum park planned
Tainan County is set to become home to Asia's largest museum park after a six-year-old plan to build a metropolitan park in Jenteh (仁德) Township was brought back to life with the injection of new funds from the Ministry of the Interior and the Chi Mei Group. The NT$600 million (US$18 million) project is being jointly developed by the Tainan County Government and state-owned Taiwan Sugar Corp. Chi Mei Group has pledged to spend NT$1 billion to build a museum in the park. A ceremony will be held Friday for Chi Mei to present the gift to the county government. According to the plan, the Tainan Museum Park will cover 40 hectares and will present indigenous cultures, industries, landscapes and customs, while stressing coexistence with the local ecology.
■ Diplomacy
Taiwan-Japan Forum opens
The 2005 Taiwan-Japan Forum opened in Tokyo yesterday, with the participation of government officials, think tank scholars and business executives from the two countries. Among the participants will be President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) chief of staff, Yu Shyi-kun, who arrived in Tokyo on Monday with a 20-plus member delegation to the annual conference. The 2005 Taiwan-Japan Forum is being co-sponsored by the Taipei-based Foundation on International and Cross-Strait Studies and the World Peace Research Institute of Japan.
■ Society
Activists expect big crowd
Over 3,000 pro-independence activists are expected to attend the "Taiwan Republic national flag-raising" ceremony slated for tomorrow in front of the Presidential Office, the convener of the 908 Taiwan Republic Movement said yesterday. Wang Hsien-chi (王獻極) made the prediction at a news conference for the upcoming activity, which will be held to mark what he called "Taiwan Independence Day," which falls on Sept. 8 -- the date that Japan gave up its territorial claims to Taiwan after signing a peace treaty with the Allied nations in San Francisco in 1951. He urged those who support the campaign to join the Sept. 8 flag-raising ceremony, which he described as "the first of its kind in 400 years." Wang said that five young people will read a statement of the Taiwan Republic Movement in five different languages.
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