■ MILITARY
Air bases to put on a show
The Chihhang Air Base in Taitung County and the Chingchuankang Air Base in Taichung County will be open to public today and tomorrow, the Air Force General Headquarters announced yesterday. All are welcome to visit the bases to see air shows featuring F-16, Mirage and Indigenous Defense Force jet fighters, as well as S-70C helicopters, Air Force officers said. In addition to the air shows, ground exhibitions featuring Air Force fighters and weaponry and performances by Air Force honor guards will also be held at the two air bases, which will be open from 8:30am to 4pm. The activities are part of a series of celebrations marking "Air Force Day" on Aug. 14.
■ CORRUPTION
Gao denies allegations
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬) yesterday dismissed media speculation that he was involved in a corruption case in which on of his legislative aides were detained. A story by the Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday said Yao Sheng-chih (姚昇志), deputy director of Gao's legislative office, had given Gao NT$500,000 (US$15,000) out of a NT$2 million bribe Yao had received from a company as a "political donation." The United Daily News also ran a story yesterday alleging that Gao could have been be Yao's accomplice in the case. Gao dismissed the report, saying that he would cooperate with the prosecutors' investigation and that he would take legal action against the newspaper. In a statement, Gao said he was not involved in any wrongdoing and had not illegally profited during his coordination between a Taichung-based company and the National Property Agency.
■ DEFENSE
US, Taiwan schedule talks
The annual US-Taiwan defense industry conference is scheduled to be held in Annapolis, Maryland, from Sept. 9 to Sept. 11, a business source said on Thursday. Deputy Minister of National Defense Ko Cheng-heng (柯承亨), US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense David Sedney and US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Christensen are expected to deliver speeches during the two-day conference, said Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the US-Taiwan Business Council. The council -- a private US association dedicated to promoting trade, economic and financial relations between Taiwan and the US in the absence of formal diplomatic ties -- is organizing the conference, the sixth of its kind. Hammond-Chambers said that the conference will focus on modernizing Taiwan's military, the challenges the nation faces in national defense and security and on military cooperation and exchanges between Taiwan and the US.
■ CRIME
Police find fuel leak
Taitung police yesterday discovered a leak in a major pipeline that supplies fuel for fighter jets at the Air Force's Taitung base. Police said that the pipe had likely been tampered with and that aviation fuel might have been stolen. The leak was discovered at the 347.5km marker on Route 9 after police received a tip about a fuel leak at around 9pm on Thursday. Officers who arrived at the scene discovered that the pipeline belonged to the Air Force, so they notified military personnel, who arrived and fixed the leak in less than an hour. The police later discovered a tap had been added to the pipeline and speculated that thieves might have been planning to use it to steal fuel.
■ POLITICS
Tu defends assets request
Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) said yesterday that a request that had been sent to schools asking them to help promote efforts to retrieve stolen assets held by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was aimed at delivering transitional justice. Tu said the KMT had "schemed" to become the wealthiest political party in the world after it fled from China to Taiwan in 1949. He said that retrieving the KMT's stolen assets and returning them to the national coffers was in the nation's best interest and added that the move was not aimed at serving the Democratic Progressive Party or any political faction. It is the public's right to have the KMT assets retrieved in the interest of transitional justice, he said. The ministry's Taichung office recently wrote to all high schools and vocational schools in the country asking them to link their Web sites to a ministry site pushing for the retrieval of the KMT's stolen assets.
■ HEALTH
Shops selling expired food
The Consumers' Foundation yesterday urged the public to pay more heed to food safety, saying about 25 percent of supermarkets around the nation sold food products beyond their expiration date. Foundation chairman Cheng Jen-hung (程仁宏) said a survey that the foundation conducted from July 31 to last Friday at 95 supermarkets nationwide revealed that 25 percent of these shops had food products on their shelves that were already past their expiration date. Some of these products were more than 100 days past their expiration date, Cheng said. The Food Sanitation Management Act (食品衛生 管理法) stipulates that food products that are past their expiration date cannot be reprocessed, displayed for sale, transported, donated or sold in public places, with violators subject to a fine of between NT$30,000 and NT$150,000. Repeat offenders risk losing their business license.
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