■ Crime
Man gets life in jail
A 26-year-old man was sentenced to life in prison for killing a boy, a court official said yesterday. The man, surnamed Chang, was found guilty of causing the death of a two-year-old boy, a spokesman for the Taoyuan District Court said. The boy was rushed to the hospital in November last year with injuries to his head, a broken left shoulder and many bruises and burns. The boy died the same day in the hospital. The police later found that Chang, entrusted to take care of the child after his mother was sent to prison, had repeatedly beaten the boy and tattooed his shoulder, chest and the area around his genitals.
■ Legislation
Currency law amended
The Cabinet yesterday approved an amendment to the Provisions on Damaging and Duplicating National Currency (妨害國幣懲治條例) stipulating that violators can be fined up to NT$3 million (US$90,909). The amendment will be referred to the legislature for final approval. At present, the law states that those who damage or duplicate national currency can be fined up to NT$15,000 and receive sentences ranging from 10 years behind bars to death. The amendment increases the fine but removes the death penalty.
■ Politics
MAC blames China
Responding to opposition party questions about deadlocked negotiations over Chinese tourist visits, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday that progress depended on Beijing. He added that Chinese officials were refusing to negotiate. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus had requested that officials explain the delay.
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