■CRIME
Man eggs Presidential Office
A 57-year-old man was arrested in Taipei yesterday for throwing eggs at the Presidential Office. They said the suspect, surnamed Lee, was wearing a white T-shirt decorated with different colored Chinese characters reading “quality of life is affected” and “living is more important.” He told the police that he was unhappy with his quality of life and had taken the high-speed rail from Chiayi to protest. Lee bought a dozen eggs from a convenience store and arrived at the front of the Presidential Office around 3:30pm. Hsueh Wen-jung (薛文容), deputy director and spokesman of Taipei City Police Department’s Zhongzheng First Precinct, said the military police guarding the building stopped Lee and then handed him over to the police.
■EDUCATION
Students win IChO medals
Four Taiwanese captured two gold medals, one silver and one bronze at the week-long 2008 International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO) for high-school students in Budapest, Hungary, which concluded on Sunday. The two gold medalists are Tsai Cheng-ting (蔡政廷), a student at the private Weiger High School in Taipei, and Ting Po-chieh (丁柏傑) from Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School. Lai Cheng-yu (賴政優) of Jianguo High School won the silver medal and Li Che-hao (黎哲豪) of Wu Ling Senior High School in Taoyuan County took a bronze. Sixty-nine countries sent teams to this year’s contest, which consists of chemistry tests and experiments, as well as theoretical and practical questions in all areas of chemistry. The delegation will tour Hungary this week before returning home on Friday. The IChO, one of the International Science Olympiads, was first held in Prague in 1968 and has been held every year since, with the exception of 1971.
■HEALTH
KRTC disinfects carriages
All MRT carriages in Kaohsiung City have been disinfected on a daily basis in recent weeks to prevent the spread of enterovirus, a Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp (KRTC) spokesman said on Sunday. The company has 126 carriages, which serve more than 150,000 passengers a day, said Huang Yi-chung (黃一中), a KRTC department chief in charge of public affairs. “During peak hours, MRT carriages tend to be very crowded and passengers often touch the doors, windows, straps and armrests which could become virus spreading sources,” he said. Since the number of suspected and confirmed severe enterovirus cases increased significantly last month, Huang said the KRTC has been disinfecting its carriages every day.
■TRANSPORT
CAL plane has engine woes
A China Airlines (CAL) plane traveling from Hokkaido, Japan, to Taoyuan International Airport began to experience engine problems just before 8pm last Thursday and was forced to make an emergency landing at Naha Airport in Okinawa, the Kyodo News Agency reported yesterday. None of the crew members or passengers was hurt. Kyodo said that the pilot of the Boeing 737 noticed that the instrument panel indicated a problem with the right engine at about 7:50pm, when the plane was about 160km east of Naha. The pilot decided to shut down the engine and radioed the airport to request permission to make an emergency landing. CAL maintenance workers are examining the plane to try to determine the cause of the engine problems, the report 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