■ EVENTS
Bastille Day to kick off
The French Association in Taiwan (AFT) is organizing its annual Bastille Day celebration to commemorate France’s National Day on July 14. The “Grand Ball Fest” will take place on Saturday July 12 at Taipei’s Huashan Culture Center (華山創意文化園區) on Bade Road from 6.30pm to 2am. The ball, which is open to all, will feature a buffet, two bars and a disc jockey, as well as live music from Taichung Latino band Calentico. Tickets are NT$250 for AFT members, NT$300 for non-members and NT$200 for children aged between 12 and 18. For those interested, more details about the event can be obtained on the AFT Web site at www.taiwanaccueil.com
■ HEALTH
Enterovirus cases down
Forty-three serious cases of enterovirus were reported last week, down from 65 the previous week, a Centers for Disease Control official said yesterday. Despite the decline and based on previous years, the public should still be on guard against a possible small outbreak once schools reopen in September following the summer vacation, said Chou Chih-hao (周志浩), deputy director of the centers’ Department of Health. Chou warned that kindergartens and daycare centers should also remain on high alert as they do not have a summer vacation. Adults and especially children should wash their hands often to avoid contracting the enterovirus, he said.
■ DIPLOMACY
Taiwan gives to Panama
Ambassador to Panama Hou Ping-fu (侯平福) presented US$2.6 million to the Panamanian government on Friday to help the Central American country build a hospital in an impoverished area of Panama City. After accepting the donation, Panamanian Minister of Health Rosario Turner expressed gratitude to Hou, saying that establishing the Hospital de Panama Este in an eastern suburb of the city was one of the ministry’s main construction projects. “So far, 24.6 percent of the hospital has been completed,” Turner said, adding that once it is inaugurated, the hospital, equipped with advanced facilities, is expected to provide some 342,000 local residents with a wide range of medical services, including general patient care, surgery, outpatient treatment and emergency care, as well as women’s and children’s healthcare. She said the establishment of the hospital would assuage a chronic shortage of medical care for residents in the area. Hou said the donation was aimed at helping Panama improve its medical care and further enhance bilateral relations.
■ DIPLOMACY
Taiwan funds water project
The Taiwanese government has donated more than US$370,000 to Honduras to help fund water supply projects in the Central American country’s rural areas, a report issued on Saturday by Honduras-based Radio America said. Accepting the money a day earlier, Honduran International Cooperation Minster Karen Zelaya also appealed to government and non-government organizations worldwide to sponsor projects promoting health and wellbeing for the Honduran people. The fund is to be used for improving water supplies and sanitation systems in impoverished provinces and several immigrant reception centers in the country.
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