■ ENVIRONMENT
Kaohsiung to mark Earth Day
Kaohsiung City Government chiefs will ride bicycles to work tomorrow to mark Earth Day, the city government said yesterday. Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said city government officials may also take public transportation to work tomorrow to set a good example for residents to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. The city government will also turn off lights and shut down elevators between 12pm and 1pm as part of its Earth Day efforts, she said. "The move to mark [Earth Day] is symbolic," she said, adding that she would also encourage city government officials to have light meals or become vegetarians. The city government said it planned to replace all light bulbs in city government offices with energy-saving ones within three years and to turn off lights in city government buildings between 1pm and 1:30pm every day.
■ ENVIRONMENTt
Academics make vow
Nearly 100 academics and experts from home and abroad signed a declaration vowing to commit themselves to environmental conservation at an environmental forum in Tainan. The declaration, signed by participants to the two-day "2008 Jade Mountain Forum on Sustainable Environment," will be read on World Earth Day tomorrow at the summit of Yushan by staff members of the Sustainable Environment Research Center of National Cheng Kung University, the host of the forum. Yushan, which is 3,952m tall, is the highest peak in Taiwan. The declaration - written in Chinese, English and Japanese - states that environmental sustainability is a global challenge faced by all nations and that the signees, environmental protection advocates from the Pacific region, are duty-bound to promote environmental protection.
■ EDUCATION
Academicians list announced
Academia Sinica, the country's top research institution, has announced its list of academician candidates for this year, with 47 outstanding scholars nominated for the prestigious honor. A maximum of 30 candidates will be elected by incumbent academicians in a vote scheduled for early July, the academy said in a statement. Twenty-six of the candidates, or 55 percent of the total, are foreign-based and the remaining 21 are based in Taiwan the statement said. Only five of the nominees are female, and 14 were previously nominated but failed to be elected. Academia Sinica academicians are grouped into three divisions - mathematics and physical sciences, life sciences and humanities, and social sciences. A maximum of 10 new academicians can be elected to each of the three divisions at each biennial election. The academicians are full members of the academy and make up the Convocation of Academia Sinica, which formulates academic research policies. The title of academician is an honorary lifetime privilege.
■ LITERATURE
'Absinthe' wins prize
Chih Yen (知言), a National Taiwan University graduate student, has won first prize for mystery writing for her novel Absinthe in a competition sponsored by the Mystery Writers of Taiwan. She is the first female to take top honors. Chih was awarded NT$50,000 and a trophy on Saturday at the seventh annual conference of the Mystery Writers of Taiwan after defeating three competitors from Hong Kong in the final round. The contest received a total of 36 submissions from domestic and overseas competitors. After the award ceremony, Chih thanked her family.
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