■ CRIME
23 nabbed in phone scam
Police said yesterday they had arrested 23 suspects in a large phone scam that had conned hundreds of thousands of yuan from people in China. The suspects allegedly obtained bank account details by posing on the phone as Chinese police officers or employees at Chinese banks and telecoms companies, the Criminal Investigation Bureau said. They reportedly “notified” their victims that their accounts were being used for money-laundering or that their phone bills were overdue, later using the details to empty the bank accounts, the bureau said. The 23 were arrested in several raids on Thursday.
■ POLITICS
Legislature still deadlocked
The legislature remained in deadlock yesterday as the Democratic Progressive Party and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucuses continued to disagree over whether to include a ban on “risky” beef products from the US in a proposed amendment to the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法). Both caucuses said the legislature will likely deal with the issue after local government elections next Saturday. Meanwhile, Chu Cheng-chi (朱正騏), a doctoral student who previously ate a cow dung hamburger to protest the easing of the ban on US beef, publicized the mobile phone numbers of KMT lawmakers who have endorsed the party's proposed amendment to the act at the legislature. Chu urged the public to call the legislators to express their discontent. KMT caucus secretary-general Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟) said the caucus could sue Chu for revealing private information.
■ CRIME
Fake card ring busted
Investigators said yesterday they had busted a credit card counterfeiting ring, arresting five suspects and seizing 566 fake cards in a raid in Taipei County. The group was suspected of making NT$100 million (US$3 million) in illicit gains by using fake credit cards to buy computers, communications and consumer electronics products and selling them at about 70 percent below market value, Criminal Investigation Bureau officials said. The suspects bought credit card numbers from a Malaysian man, and then used the numbers to produce fake credit cards, officials said. The suspects were transferred to the Banciao District Prosecutors’ Office.
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