■ Olympics
Hsieh spurns torch plan
Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) rejected China's offer to make Taiwan one of the stops on a "domestic route" through China for the torch relay ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games. Saying that Taiwan and China are different countries, Hsieh said the government will not allow the Olympic flame to pass through Taiwan as part of the "domestic route" designated by Beijing. The nation would welcome the torch if it is to be passed on directly to another country immediately after Taiwan, but not if it comes from China and then returns to China before moving on to a third country, Hsieh said. According to Huang, Beijing filed an application to the International Olympic Committee on Nov. 10 to pass the Olympic torch to Taiwan using the same model applied to Hong Kong, which he said was a move to promote China's territorial claim over Taiwan.
■ Government
New exam questions pushed
The 908 Taiwan Republic Campaign yesterday visited Examination Yuan President Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文) to ask him to include questions about the San Francisco Peace Treaty in the entrance exams for would-be public servants. Group head Peter Wang (王獻極) said Sept. 8 should be set aside as "Taiwan's Independence Day" to mark Taiwan's de facto independence, since on that day in 1951 Japan signed the treaty, relinquishing its claim to Taiwan. Wang said that civil servants should be required to know about this piece of Taiwan's history. Yao said that he could understand the reasoning behind Wang's request but he did not have the power to intervene in the design of the tests.
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