■ SOCIETY
Refugees obtain residency
Seventy-eight Tibetan refugees who had overstayed their visas have been granted resident status in Taiwan, the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission said yesterday. Of the total, 40 have received work permits, it said. The commission is still reviewing the applications of the rest, adding that it would provide them with services such as job-matching, emergency aid, medical care and counseling. Amendments to the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法) passed in January provide that stateless people from India and Nepal who entered Taiwan on fake passports between May 21, 1999, and Dec. 31, 2007, and Tibetan refugees who have overstayed their time in Taiwan are eligible to apply for residency certificates. The law was amended after more than 100 Tibetan refugees in Taiwan staged a sit-in protest in December asking the government to grant them asylum.
■ CULTURE
Wu mulls candidates: Su
Executive Yuan Spokesman Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) yesterday declined to answer whether Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) had appointed Taipei City Government Research, Development and Evaluation Commission Director-General Emile Sheng (盛治仁) as minister of cultural affairs after the incumbent, Huang Pi-twan (黃碧端), tendered her resignation last month. Su said Wu had been talking to possible candidates. “Anyone who can serve the cultural sector and effectively integrate opinions within the sector is a suitable candidate,” Su said. At a separate setting, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) voiced his support for Sheng, saying that Sheng’s experience in organizing the Deaflympics in September should prepare him for the new task in the ministry. “Sheng has good connections with people in cultural and arts circles after organizing the Deaflympics, and I believe he will do well in the ministry,” Hau said.
■ CRIME
Men nabbed over drugs
Aviation police inspectors arrested two men for attempting to smuggle in 6kg of the drug ketamine at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday. Police said the suspects — both Taiwanese nationals — disguised the drug as an insulating agent. They tried to ship the drug into Taiwan from Malaysia as part of a consignment of living coral fish. The two men have been taken to the Taoyuan District Prosecutors' Office for further questioning, police said. Under Taiwan's laws, individuals who produce, transport and sell “category three” banned drugs like ketamine are subject to a jail sentence of at least five years and a maximum fine of NT$5 million (US$153,600).
■ CULTURE
Master puppets lost in fire
A region that takes pride in its puppetry lost between 400 and 500 of its best pieces to a fire, leaving just one major collection, county officials said yesterday. The fire, which is under investigation, burned most of the large, ornate, one-of-a-kind puppets in a warehouse in Huwei Township (虎尾), Yunlin County, officials said. The blaze spared only a few that had been taken out for a performance. “This is a big part of the county's culture, so we value its survival,” a county government official said. “Each puppet may have had only one or two likenesses, so there's no way to replicate them.” Local media called the fire a “burial” and listed the names of the more famous puppets that were lost in the fire. Officials said the county had planned to promote puppetry via films and a new museum to draw international interest.
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