■SOCIETY
Police arrest 65 at festival
Police yesterday said that so far a total of 65 people had been arrested for possession or use of drugs during the annual Spring Scream music festival in Kenting. Police said they arrested one man and three women in a room at the Chateau Beach Resort for possession of Ketamine, Ecstasy and other drugs. Police said the man admitted he used drugs, while the three women denied drugs use. Also on Saturday evening, police arrested 61 partygoers for possession or use of drugs in five rooms at the same beach resort. Those arrested will be charged with violation of the Narcotics Endangerment Prevention Act (違反毒品危害防制條例), police said. The festival started on Friday and ran through yesterday. Police said that as of yesterday, no violence or sexual assaults had been reported. Police said there had been 10 car accidents during the festival resulting in three deaths and 12 injuries. Some of the accidents were caused by drunk driving, police said.
■ DEFENSE
ROC-PRC meet downplayed
Reported military-to-military contacts between Ministry of National Defense and Chinese officials scheduled to take place in Hawaii later this year have been blown out of proportion, a report posted on the Defense News magazine Web site said on Friday. The report quoted a former US military official as saying that the rumored meeting at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS), a US Department of Defense-funded think tank based in Hawaii, was “not a big deal.” The source told Defense News that Taiwanese and Chinese officials had met each other on several previous occasions since the mid-1990s and that the APCSS’ Transnational Security Cooperation Course in Hawaii was not part of formal military contact, as was mistakenly reported by several media outlets.
■ TOURISM
Hualien eyes ‘blue highway’
Hualien and Okinawa hope to build a “blue highway” on the Pacific Ocean to connect the two popular tourist destinations. Following a meeting with Hualien Mayor Tsai Chih-ta (蔡啟塔), Okinawa Deputy Governor Katsuko Asato said on Saturday that Okinawa was promoting cruises to attract more foreign tourists and the planned blue highway was the key element of this. Asato said she hoped the planned blue highway would help increase the volume of tourist visits to the Japanese prefecture from the current 5 million to 10 million per year. Tsai said that because the blue highway would be international, its opening would involve maritime rights and quarantine guidelines. Dealing with any legal problems was key to its success, Tsai said.
■ CRIME
Police catch book thief
Police have arrested a woman who stole nearly 2,000 books from bookstores in the past year to sell them on the Internet, local media reported on Saturday. Police arrested the women, surnamed Fu (傅), 31, in Kaohsiung on Friday. Fu admitted having stolen nearly 2,000 books from Kaohsiung bookstores and selling 1,500 of them online, local media reported. Fu said she did not like reading but began stealing books after she was laid off by a factory early last year. Fu mostly took bestsellers and travel books. Her online book business was so good that she had long-time clients and accepted orders for books. In the past year, Fu stole an average of five books per day. To avoid being recognized by bookstore staff, she constantly changed her appearance police 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