■ TRANSPORTATION
Buses may soon use tunnel
Passenger buses are expected to gain access to Hsuehshan Tunnel, the centerpiece of the Chiang Wei-shui Freeway linking Taipei and Ilan counties, from the middle of next month, following Thursday's successful fire drill in the tunnel. A National Freeway Bureau official said the drill was aimed at ensuring that people would be able to escape smoothly and that proper air ventilation would be maintained amid heavy smoke if a fire were triggered by a bus crash in the 12.9km tunnel. The bureau will submit the drill reports to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications this week for further evaluation, the official said. If all goes well, tour buses will be allowed to use the tunnel starting Nov. 15.
■ CRIME
Pirated DVDs seized
Police have seized more than 45,000 pirated DVDs in two separate raids on illegal factories in Taiwan, a US motion picture group said. Police also seized 58 CD burners used to make the pirated copies during the raids in central and southern Taiwan this week, the Los Angeles-based Motion Picture Association (MPA)said in an e-mail statement received yesterday. Five suspects were arrested in one of the raids in Taichung and could face copyright infringement charges that carry up to a five-year jail term, the statement said. The second raid was said to be in Kaohsiung. Taiwanese police in charge of combating copyright fraud could not be reached for comment yesterday. The statement said US studios owned by MPA members lost US$6.1 billion in revenue in 2005 global due mainly to illegal copying and Internet piracy. Of the losses, about US$1.2 billion came from piracy across the Asia-Pacific region, it said.
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