■ Politics
13 million eligible to vote
More than 13 million people are eligible to vote in the Dec. 3 local government elections, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said yesterday. The CEC has completed initial tallies of eligible voters for the simultaneous elections for city and county government chiefs, city and county councilors and township amd village chiefs. According to the tallies, 13,587,635 citizens are eligible to vote in city mayor/county commissioner elections. For the township/village chief elections, the number of eligible voters stands at 11,484,871. Meanwhile 13,281,916 citizens are eligible to vote in regional elections for city/county councilors, 168,024 people are eligible to vote in urban Aboriginal city/county council seats and 112,979 people are eligible to vote in mountainous aboriginal city/county council seats. Except for the nation's two largest municipalities -- Taipei and Kaohsiung -- all other local government top posts are up for grabs, including the islands of Kinmen and Matsu.
■ Politics
Councilor raised in Taiwan
The Vancouver City Council election has seen the election of B.C. Lee (黎拔佳) to the city council, the first councilman with a Taiwan connection to be elected in this capacity. Lee was born in Macau and raised in Taiwan, studied at New York University and is vice president of Fireglo Strategic Marketing and Communications, which describes itself as a "cross-cultural event planning and marketing organization." Although three out of ten members of the Vancouver City Council, after the most recent election, are ethnic Chinese, a proportion that is a fair reflection of the Chinese population of the city, this is the first time that someone brought up in Taiwan has been elected. Lee was nominated in the previous city council elections, but was edged out by 500 votes.
■ Tourism
Lucky businessman feted
A businessman yesterday became the 1 millionth Japanese visitor to Taiwan this year, receiving heaps of gifts and ?1 million (US$8,400) to spend on Taiwanese goods at the expense of Taiwan's government, the tourism board said. Yushiyuki Yamawakei, 24, raised his hands in delight when officials told him that he was the landmark Japanese arrival. In addition to a credit card with which he can spend ?1 million in Taiwan, Yamawakei received 100 gifts, including tea, wine, handicrafts and other Taiwanese produce, the Taiwan Tourist Board said in a statement. The annual number of Japanese visitors to Taiwan has not exceeded the 1 million mark in the past few decades. But the tourist board said it expects a record 1.1 million Japanese tourists this year -- a 30 percent increase from last year.
■ Environment
Su lauds `green' buildings
Taiwan has 836 public and private "green buildings" that save energy and are environmentally friendly, and more are planned, Minister of the Interior Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) said yesterday. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the 2005 Green Building International Conference, Su said that Taiwan has already passed a law to construct more "green buildings" and the ones already built not only save on electricity consumption, but also conserve a significant amount of drinking water. The minister also said that the government has plans to help refurbish old buildings to make them more environmentally friendly. There are 400 buildings already earmarked for restoration.
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