■ CRIME
Prosecutors slam report
The Supreme Prosecutor’s Office’s Special Investigation Panel (SIP) yesterday complained about unsubstantiated reports in the press about the case against former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). “I told reporters last month that there is no evidence to prove that former president Chen Shui-bian had taken any cash by aircraft during his visits to Taiwan’s allies. I do not understand why such a story was still published today,” SIP spokesman Chen Yun-nan (陳雲南) said. Chen made the remarks in response to a Chinese-language China Times report yesterday that said “the SIP discovered sufficient evidence” to prove that the former president had transported US$5 million, originally from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to Palau on board a China Airlines’ plane during a trip in 2006. “Since the beginning of the investigation, we have not discovered any evidence to prove that allegation and we have not told any reporter that we have,” Chen Yun-nan said.
■ HISTORY
WWII graves located
Taiwan’s representative office in Papua New Guinea has located graves that it believes to be those of Republic of China (ROC) soldiers who died in World War II while they were enslaved by the Japanese army on the Pacific island, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Lee Tsung-fen (李宗芬), deputy-head of the ministry’s Department of East Asia and Pacific Affairs, said that local Chinese compatriots said the graves at Rabaul were first discovered by an Australian pilot. It is thought that more than 1,600 ROC soldiers were captured by the Japanese and sent to Papua New Guinea camp during the war. Many of the soldiers reportedly either died in the camp or on the way to it. Lee yesterday said the Ministry of National Defense would send officials to the island to ascertain the identities of those in the graves, adding that the ministry would decide whether to transport the remains back to Taiwan after consulting with the relatives of the men.
■ SOCIETY
Canadian to begin walk
Canadian Jean Beliveau, who is in the eighth year of his 12-year walk around the world to promote “peace and non-violence to the profit of the children of the world,” arrived in Taiwan on Sunday. The 53-year-old Beliveau will begin his walk from the northern tip of the nation to the south on Saturday and will be accompanied by Lin Ming-te (林明德), who has walked around the nation five times to promote environmental protection. Beliveau said yesterday at a press conference that while he doesn’t claim to have changed the world, he hopes to inject the brief thought of world peace in people he meets. The pair said they welcome anyone who wishes to join their 570km walk through Taiwan.
■ ENTERTAINMENT
Chen, Lu film opens today
A film about the election-eve gun attack on former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) will debut this week, when it is expected to reignite debate about the controversial 2004 shooting incident. The Hong Kong action movie Ballistic uses a fictional plot to revisit the March 19 assassination attempt, when Chen and Lu were shot and slightly injured during a campaign rally in Taichung. “The director thought this incident was really one of a kind, with a very dramatic element,” film producer Lin Shun-kuo said. “But it’s only an approximation of the incident, not totally consistent with what happened.
■ PANDAS
Panda house opens Jan. 26
The panda house at the Taipei Zoo will open to the public on the first day of the Lunar New Year, Jan. 26, the Taipei City Government said yesterday. City government spokesman Yang Hsiao-tung (羊曉東) said the 30-day quarantine period for the two giant pandas would end on Jan. 23. Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) will officiate at the inauguration of the panda house on Jan. 24, after which the zoo is scheduled to close on Jan. 25 for Lunar New Year’s Eve, Yang said.
■ AVIATION
Airport system down again
The immigration computer system at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport broke down again yesterday at around 6:40pm, National Immigration Agency director-general Hsieh Li-gong (謝立功) told the Taipei Times by telephone, adding that the breakdown only lasted about 20 minutes and did not cause any major problems. Yesterday’s was the third time the system broke down this month.
■ SOCIETY
Flood center being built
The Water Resources Agency said yesterday that construction of a flood prevention command center in central Taiwan, equipped with a flood warning system, would be completed by the end of October. Officials in charge of river management said the flood warning system would allow staff at the command center to monitor water levels on the Dali River and the six tributaries that run through the Taichung basin, covering both Taichung City and Taichung County. The project was part of the central government’s three-stage flood control plan for the Dali River basin, which began in 2004 with a budget of NT$5.7 billion (US$171.97 million), officials 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