■ CRIME
Former officials impeached
The Control Yuan yesterday impeached four former Miaoli District Court officials for misconduct. The four are accused of entertaining informers involved in cases under investigation and employing the services of female escorts in March 2006. Control Yuan member Cheng Jen-hung (程仁宏) said their behavior had deeply harmed the image of the judiciary and the Control Yuan considered their alleged actions major violations of the Civil Servants Work Act (公務人員服務法). Cheng said the Control Yuan would refer former prosecutors Tai Jui-chi (戴瑞麒) and Liao Chi-tsun (廖啟村), former judicial police chief Tsai Chia-hung (蔡佳宏) and former judicial police Tseng Te-yuan (曾德淵) to the Commission on the Disciplinary Sanctions of Functionaries for punishment.
■ CRIME
Gullible girls arrested
Two high school girls were arrested for shoplifting yesterday after falling for an Internet rumor that blackening the barcodes of products could fool security systems, a television report said. The teenagers were caught red-handed at a cosmetics shop in Taichung, TVBS reported. The girls tried to walk away with NT$8,000 worth of cosmetics and skin-care products. They had blackened the barcodes with marker pens, thinking this would avoid triggering the electronic sensors at the shop’s door as had been claimed in Internet chat rooms, the TV report said. “They set off the alarm when they stepped out of the shop. One panicked girl rushed to the street while the other ran inside the shop, only to be caught by the shopkeepers,” TVBS quoted a police officer as saying.
■ SOCIETY
Adoption encouraged
The Child Welfare League Foundation yesterday urged people to adopt abandoned children.The foundation’s spokesman said that some parents abandon their children because of financial problems, some because the children were suffering from serious diseases and others because they are in prison and cannot look after their children. However, recent government statistics show that the number of local families willing to adopt children had dwindled over the past few years, the spokesman said. A sluggish economy is one of the main reasons behind the drop in the number of families willing to adopt children, the spokesman said. To make matters worse, some families that have adopted children plan to give up the children because of financial woes, he said. The spokesman also called on the public to donate money to help fund the foundation’s child adoption program.
■ CULTURE
Chiayi to host art works
The National Palace Museum will hold a special exhibition from next Friday to Jan. 4 to herald the establishment of the museum’s branch in Chiayi County, which is scheduled to be completed in 2011. The exhibition, titled “Exploring Asia: Episode One of the National Palace Museum’s Southern Branch,” will be held at the Chiayi Performing Arts Center. It will display 117 items featuring six themes — Buddhist sculptures, Asian scriptures, fabrics and textiles in Asia, blue and white porcelain from Asia, Asian tea cultures and traditions, and Western trends in Asian culture. The exhibition is intended to help visitors understand the patterns of cultural transmission, dissemination and evolution in Asia. It will be the first of a series of thematic presentations by the museum in the lead-up to the launch of the Chiayi branch, said Fung Ming-chu (馮明珠), deputy director of the museum.
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