■ EARTHQUAKES
Quakes strike south
The nation was struck by two mild earthquakes yesterday, but no damage or casualties were reported. The first quake measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale occurred yesterday morning, with its epicenter in Kaohsiung County, 6.3km underground, the Seismological Observation Center said. The second quake, measuring 4, occurred an hour and a half later off off the northeastern coast. The epicenter of the second quake was 21.1 km off Ilan, 12km under the sea.
■ EDUCATION
Universities sign deal
National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in southern Taiwan and Brown University of the US signed a cooperation agreement to strengthen academic and personnel exchanges. The agreement was signed on Thursday by David Kertzer, vice president of Brown University, and NCKU vice-president Feng Ta-hsuan (馮達旋) at the NCKU’s medical college. According to the agreement, NCKU can send four students from its medical college each year to Brown Medical School affiliated hospitals as interns for a period of no more than two months, while Brown can send between one and eight of its medical school students to NCKU each year for the same purpose for a period of no more than eight months. Students from each university will enjoy free tuition and accommodation at the other. Brown, located in Providence, Rhode Island, is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US.
■ FOOD
No separating snacks
Two of the nation’s favorite snacks — steamed dumplings xiaolungbao (小籠包) and fried dumplings shuijianbao (水餃包) — are enjoyed equally by foreigners, the results of a recent survey released by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) showed. Held alongside the Photonics Festival at the Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Hall 1 on Thursday, the poll was organized as a food competition, in which foreign visitors were invited to taste the two types of dumplings before casting their votes on which was the tastiest. The poll was one of a series of events in TAITRA’s Taste of Taiwan Cuisine festival. According to TAITRA officials, Taiwanese cuisine is one of the major draws for foreign visitors, whose numbers reached 3.71 million last year. The council said the food show will allow more overseas visitors to experience Taiwan’s culinary culture.
■ POLITICS
Minister urges re-think
Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission (OCAC) Minister Wu Ying-yih (吳英毅) last week urged that a proposal to combine his commission with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) be reconsidered. The issue needed to be rethought because overseas nationals are valuable assets to Taiwan’s diplomacy, he said. Wu argued that with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) calling for a diplomatic truce between Taiwan and China, affairs related to overseas compatriots and the unofficial channels they provide have become even more important. Overseas citizens, particularly those in nations which maintain no diplomatic relations with Taiwan, provide valuable shortcuts for the government to connect to the rest of the world, he said. He asserted that if the commission were merged with the foreign ministry, MOFA officials would no longer be able to take part in overseas compatriot meetings in non-allied countries, leaving the field open to China and making it difficult to manage this valuable resource in the future.
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