■ Society
What's in a name?
The Tu (毒) family in Chiayi County's Taipao City shares its unusual last name with just two other households in Taiwan. Their surname, read in Mandarin with the second tone, means "poison." The word is also slang for recreational drugs. Tu Chin-kun (毒錦坤), a service station owner and the family's eldest son, said that everyone calls him "drug addict" (毒仔), punning on the double meaning of his last name, TVBS reported online yesterday. When he was in the military, officers would stop in shock when they read his name on their roll sheet. Tu said that his great-great-grandfather was an official interpreter for Qing officials in Puli (埔里). The family wasn't sure, however, if his last name was really Tu or if someone wrote the wrong character. There was no way to check since the family did not have any genealogical records except for a photo of their great-great-grandfather wearing the robes of an official. Although people often suggest that they change their name, the Tus have other ideas, TVBS said. They hope that someday they can meet the two other Tu families in Taiwan and hold a family reunion.
■ Visa
AIT announces lunar break
The American Institute in Taiwan's (AIT) consular office will be closed from Feb. 17 to Feb. 25 for the Lunar New Year holidays. The office urges all who plan to visit the US in the near future to apply for visas as soon as possible. The AIT also called on applicants for student visas to apply as far in advance of their school's starting date as the law permits, which is about 120 days. Appointments can be made by visiting the office's data entry and appointment service Web site, www.visaagent.com.tw, it said. Additional information on US visas can be found on its Web site at www.ait.org.tw.
■ Politics
Liberian speaker under fire
A political crisis was in the making in Liberia on Sunday as legislators in the lower house of parliament begin signing a resolution to remove the speaker of the house "for acts incompatible with his status." The legislators have cited Edwin Melvin Snowe's attempt early last year to violate the government's "one China" policy by making contacts with Taiwanese leaders over re-establishing diplomatic relations. The house members also accused Snowe of cronyism involving a Lebanese merchant and a former commerce minister. Snowe, the third most important person in Liberian politics after the president and vice president, has accused President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of convening secret meetings with legislators in a bid to remove him, claims the president has denied.
■ Society
Slippery floors a hazard
Slippery floors were listed as one of many household hazards in a report released yesterday by the Taipei City Department of Health after an investigation carried out last year to determine the causes of life-threatening accidents at home. The department dispatched home safety experts to 4,264 households around the city to conduct spot checks based on its list of 198 household hazards. Places inspected included living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms, balconies and front doors. The report said that the most frequent household hazards were glossy and slippery floors, a lack of smoke detectors, no facilities for the elderly to contact help and expired fire extinguishers.
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