■ TRAVEL
Fraud alert issued
The Tourism Bureau warned consumers yesterday to be careful when shopping for bargain travel packages online. The bureau said reputable travel agencies would not just provide a mobile phone number for contact. Bureau officials said consumers should only use online travel agencies whose Web sites list their name, address, registration number, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses. The warning came after the non-profit Travel Quality Assurance Association said it had received a complaint last week from Taipei-based Spunk Tour Co that its name had been misappropriated by a group advertising low-priced package tours in a newspaper ad. Consumers can check the Web site of the Net Consumers Association (NCA) (www.nca.org.tw) to see if a tour company has been certified as reliable, the officials said. They said there are about 201 NCA-certified agencies in the country.
■ GOVERNMENT
Web goof brings apology
A media firm apologized yesterday for locating the UN's headquarters in San Francisco on a Ministry of Education Web site. The UN is headquartered in New York City. The Web site was designed to provide more information on the world organization and press the case for Taiwan's UN bid. A company spokesman said the ministry was not to blame for the blunder, which has been corrected.
■ SOCIETY
More seek help for funerals
At least 10,000 people die every year without leaving enough money to pay for their funerals, the Goodwill Charity Association said yesterday. While most were vagrants and senior citizens living alone, an growing number are middle-aged men from disadvantaged families, the association said. It said the number of people seeking its help for funeral expenses rose to 137 last year, five times the number recorded in 2001. Association president Kuo Chih-hsiang (郭志祥) said his group has handled 750 cases in the past 11 years, 677 in the past seven years alone. Of these cases, 50.81 percent involved a person aged between 20 and 50, Kuo said. Last year, 73 out of 137 cases the association handled involved people aged between 20 and 60, he said. The association provides free funeral services to members of disadvantaged groups.
■ SOCIETY
Antiques to be examined
Taipei prosecutors said yesterday that two pieces from former Taiwan Pineapple Corp chairman Huang Tsung-hung's (黃宗宏) antique collection might be national treasures. More than 50 of Huang's antiques were seized after he said he could not pay a NT$100 million (US$3 million) fine he received after being convicted of misappropriating Chung Hsing Commercial Bank funds. Prosecutors have asked the National Palace Museum to examine the two pieces, a decorated plate that might be from the Ching dynasty court and a statue of Buddha. Huang was sentenced to eight-and-half years in prison last October. He was arrested in Keelung last November while attempting to flee the country and sent to Taipei Prison.
■ CRIME
Aussie sniffer dogs on order
Four drug-sniffer dogs from Australia will arrive by the end of this year, customs officials said yesterday. Five customs officials will go to Australia next month for training in handling the dogs. Officials will use the dogs to search for illegal drugs in goods exported to Australia or in the luggage of tourists traveling to Australia, the officials 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