■ CRIME
Four charged with smuggling
Thai police have charged five people, including four Taiwanese, with smuggling 8kg of heroin worth up to US$850,000, police said yesterday. One Taiwanese man and another man of unknown nationality were arrested on Friday at a Bangkok department store with the narcotics, said Police Major General Somdet Khaokham, one of the investigating officers. The pair confessed they were part of a gang planning to smuggle the heroin into Taiwan, Somdet said. Their statements led to the arrest of three more Taiwanese men at Suvarnabhumi Airport outside Bangkok. "We believe they were not doing it for the first time," Somdet said. If found guilty of drug trafficking, the five men could face the death penalty. Somdet said police believed the heroin originated in Myanmar.
■ IMMIGRATION
PRC man swims to Kinmen
A Kinmen detachment of the Coast Guard Administration referred a Chinese national to the Kinmen Public Prosecutors' Office yesterday after he swam from a beach in Xiamen, China, to Kinmen's Dadan Islet a day earlier, where he was immediately arrested by garrison troops. Hu Xianping, 50, a resident of Nanjing, said he was trying to escape from 20 years of political persecution in China. Admitting that he had bought a map to plan his escape route, Hu said he wanted to go to Taiwan to meet his uncle, who he said is a general. Hu was arrested shortly before noon on Saturday after swimming about three-and-a-half hours across a narrow strait to Dadan. The administration's Kinmen detachment declined to comment on whether Hu had really suffered from political persecution in China.
■ DIPLOMACY
Tom Chou tapped for St Lucia
Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) has approved Tom Chou, (周台竹) secretary-general of the Coordination Council for North American Affairs, as the ambassador to St Lucia. Chou has promised to assume his new post as soon as he receives the notification of approval from the Caribbean country's government, a foreign affairs official said yesterday. Chou made the remarks on Saturday in an interview after his appointment to the new post was approved by the Executive Yuan, following the government's announcement of the resumption of diplomatic ties with St Lucia on May 1, the official said. St Lucia first established diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1984, before switching diplomatic recognition to China in 1997.
■ DIPLOMACY
Taipei seeks dumping tips
In an effort to prevent illegal waste dumping, the Taipei City Government will give cash rewards to people who provide information leading to the arrest of offenders, with rewards of up to 30 percent of the fines collected as a result of a tip, a city official said yesterday. The city's Department of Environmental Protection has stepped up its crack-down on wanton waste dumping and littering. The department, based on information supplied by residents, has uncovered a total of 8,000 cases of illegal dumping over the past five months and investigated 14,243 cases last year, the official said. Those convicted of illegally dumping waste face fines ranging from NT1,200 to NT$6,000, the official said. He said that violators will face heavy fines beginning July 1 if they commit offenses more than twice within a year.
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