■ DIPLOMACY
Obama to push ties: Bush
A US expert familiar with Taiwanese affairs said on Sunday he believed the incoming US government led by president-elect Barack Obama would continue policies aimed at pushing for closer relations between the US and Taiwan. Richard Bush, senior fellow and director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, as well as a former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan, made the remarks at a gathering of the Taiwanese American Association in Washington. Bush, who was also one of Obama’s election campaign staff in charge of diplomatic policies, was honored with an award for his contributions to US-Taiwan affairs over the past several decades. In May, Bush attended the inauguration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) as a member of the US government delegation. He has been widely regarded as a likely point man in handling cross-strait affairs in the Obama administration.
■TOURISM
Hawaii governor visits
Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle said yesterday that Hawaii was a destination of great value. Lingle, on her second visit to Taiwan since 2001 as part of an Asian tourism promotional tour, touted her home state as a beautiful island with a rich, diverse culture. She said that next year would be a great year to visit Hawaii as the island would be holding festivities all year-round in celebration of its 50th anniversary of statehood. Taiwan and Hawaii have been sister islands for 15 years.
■FILM
‘Crazy Beautiful’ wins award
Crazy Beautiful, a film by director Lee Chi-yuan (李啟源), received a Special Jury Award at the this year’s International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg in Germany, which ended on Sunday after 10 days. The work was one of 18 films from 14 countries in the film festival’s international competition section. An international jury picked Lee’s film for the Special Jury Award. Lee told reporters that it had never occurred to him that the film would win an award at the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival. In Taipei, the Government Information Office said Crazy Beautiful was entitled to a cash award of NT$200,000 (US$6,000) from the government for winning an international honor. Lee said that after receiving the award, he “praised the courage of the jury” for picking his work. He said the three actresses in the film were all acting in a movie for the first time and that their performances were “surprisingly beautiful.”
■EDUCATION
Team inspects Tamkang
A group of foreign experts visited Tamkang University yesterday in relation to its application for an International Safe School designation, which is aimed at enhancing safety awareness and education. The experts, led by Max Vosskuhler, chairman of the WHO International Safe School Committee, led the inspection of the Tamkang University campus in Taipei County. Jeng Hoang-ell (鄭晃二), executive secretary of the university’s school health and safety task promotion team, said the university has worked for years on establishing the institution as a safe school. Jeng said that the university established an online system that registers the causes, frequency and locations of all injuries and accidents that occur on and near the campus, a move that gave the university an advantage in its application.
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