■ Society
COA warns travelers
The Council of Agriculture (COA) yesterday reminded overseas citizens returning home for the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday next weekend against attempting to bring in food and fruit products from abroad. Officials from the Bureau of Animal and Plant Inspection and Quarantine said people should not bring in moon cakes containing meat or fresh fruit originating from China or Southeast Asian countries where foot and mouth disease, avian flu and swine streptococcus have been declared epidemic. Allowing uncheckd food and fruit imports from these areas could compromise the agricultural and livestock industries, officials said. They said sniffer dogs at airports and seaports are capable of sniffing out dozens of products, including mangoes, apples, pears, garlic, beef, pork, duck and chicken. Any food and fruit products discovered will be destroyed or shipped back to the point of origin, they said.
■ Society
Bathroom break costs driver
The government has decided to get tough on drivers who randomly answer the call of nature in public by fining on a man who urinated on the roadside, TVBS cable news channel reported yesterday. A Taipei court recently fined a man of NT$3,000 for stopping his car on the shoulder of a highway to answer the call of the nature, the station reported. The man said he had been caught in a traffic jam and could not find any rest rooms nearby. But the judge said what the man had done was not only obscene, but was also risky because he could cause an accident by stopping the car on the busy highway.
■ Education
Ministry seeking tutors
The Ministry of Education has been working with the National Youth Commission on a project to help both college and university students in financial straits and middle schools in remote areas. The ministry is using the commission's Web site to recruit 500 students from low-income families to give tutorial lessons in middle schools around the country. More than 1,100 students have applied so far, while more than 198 schools have requested after-school tutors. Each tutor will be paid NT$300 an hour by the ministry, with an additional travel subsidy of between NT$1,000 to NT$3,000, officials said. The plan will run on a trial basis from next month through Dec. 31.
■ Diplomacy
Chen denies frisking report
Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen (陳唐山) yesterday denied a news report that he had been treated improperly while transiting through a New York airport in May on a trip to two Caribbean allies. The report claimed that instead of being treated as dignitaries, Chen and his wife were treated as ordinary passengers and had to pass through security checks, including a body search. Chen denied the report and said that he had not been frisked. He said the US officials assigned to greet him at the airport had arrived late, which caused some confusion. "There was no offense" taken, he said, adding that US authorities had already apologized for the mix-up.
■ Sports
Taipei seeks IOC bid
Taipei has won the support of the National Council on Physical Fitness and Sports for its bid to host the 2009 Congress of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), city officials said yesterday. . Taipei must submit its application to the IOC before Oct. 3. The host city for the 2009 event will be decided next year, the officials said.
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