■ ENVIRONMENT
Dead fish litter Penghu
Tonnes of fish, from carp to tropical specimens, have washed up dead along 320km of Penghu's beaches because of low temperatures earlier this month, Penghu County environmental staffer Hsu Ching-fang said yesterday. About 45 tonnes of fish, both wild and farmed, have appeared on the beaches since Feb. 14, Hsu said. Media reports said yesterday that 10 times that amount of dead fish were still in the water, adding it was the worst mass killing off Penghu in 30 years. "Every beach in Penghu has been hit with fish in varying amounts," Hsu said. "This is something we haven't seen before." Local schools have sent their students to help with the clean-up effort. The government has allocated NT$1 million (US$34,000) for clean-up effortss, Hsu said, adding that tourists can still use the beaches.
■ DIPLOMACY
NSC chief going to Seoul
National Security Council Secretary-General Mark Chen (陳唐山) will attend South Korean president-elect Lee Myung-bak's inauguration on Monday on behalf of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), a Presidential Office source said yesterday. The president decided on Thursday to have the NSC chief lead the Taiwanese delegation to the ceremony in Seoul, the official said. Lee will be sworn in as South Korea's 17th president.
■ ECONOMY
DGBAS says deficit smaller
The government's fiscal deficit dropped to NT$30 billion (US$960 million) last year, thanks to a 5.7 percent economic growth rate and an increase in tax revenue, Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) Director-General Hsu Jan-yau said yesterday. Local companies enjoyed earnings growth and the government registered an increase in overall tax revenue as a result of the country's stable economic growth last year, Hsu said. The total tax revenue totalled NT$1.7 trillion last year, surpassing the budgeted level by NT$120 billion, with the central government seeing an increase of NT$90 billion in tax revenue, Hsu said, adding that the increase has been reflected in the narrowing of the fiscal deficit. Preliminary calculations show the overall budget surplus amounted to nearly NT$70 billion. While taking the special budget deficit into account, the government's deficit stood at NT$30 billion, a huge drop from a NT$314.7 billion deficit in 2003, Hsu said.
■ MEDICINE
Trial volunteers sought
The Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital said yesterday that it was looking for people willing to participate in a stem cell therapy trial project using umbilical cord blood for spinal cord injuries. Chen Tze-yung (陳子勇), vice president of the hospital's Taichung branch and project chief, said they hope to get 80 volunteers for the first observation stage of the trial from March 1 to June 30. Tzu Chi hospitals' research efforts into spinal cord therapy have gained recognition both at home and abroad, Chen said, as well as sponsorship money from the US, Hong Kong and China for this project. The project will not involve any invasive examinations or treatment and will not require the people to stop their regular treatments, he said. The hospital will only collect and register the information of the patients, he 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