■CRIME
Taipei Hospital probed
Shilin prosecutors yesterday searched the offices of the Department of Health’s Taipei Hospital in connection with a health insurance fraud investigation. Prosecutors yesterday led agents from the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau to search the offices of Taipei Hospital and A-Spine Asia Company (冠亞生技公司). A total of seven locations were searched. Prosecutors said doctors from the hospital and company staff were questioned. Prosecutors said they suspected that doctors purchased medical equipment from A-Spine Asia for the hospital using inflated prices, and then requested the money from the Bureau of National Health Insurance. Prosecutors suspect doctors received illegal kickbacks from the deal, adding they might be guilty of corruption and forgery.
■POLITICS
Pingtung officials questioned
Pingtung County Councilor Lin Ching-tu (林清都), who was elected speaker of the council on Monday, was yesterday questioned along with seven other councilors on suspicion of bribing his colleagues to win the speakership. Pingtung prosecutors named Lin, a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) member, as a defendant in its investigation into the vote-buying allegations. Independent councilor Wang Chi-min (王啟敏), who cooperated with Lin in an unsuccessful bid for the vice speakership, was also named as a defendant. Lin and Wang, KMT councilors Shih Su Kuei-mei (施蘇貴美), Ko Fu-kuo (柯富國), Democratic Progressive Party councilors Pan Shu-chen (潘淑真), Chou Ming-chang (邱名璋) and Huang Ming-jung (黃明榮), and independent councilor Huang Su-ping (黃斯平) were also questioned. Prosecutors and agents from the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau searched Lin and Wang’s offices and residencies, seizing several documents. KMT Councilor Tseng Yi-hsiung (曾義雄) was also detained.
■HEALTH
CDC discloses fever cases
Taiwan recorded three imported cases — all from Indonesia — of chikungunya fever in the first two months of this year, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, up from one each for the same period of 2008 and last year, CDC Deputy Director-General Shih Wen-yih (施文儀) said. All three cases of the mosquito-borne disease were discovered through airport fever screenings. The chikungunya outbreak in Indonesia is very severe and he urged travelers to take proper precautions against mosquito bites. Any traveler to Indonesia who experiences symptoms such as fever, headache, nausea and vomiting should seek medical attention immediately and inform their doctors of their travel history, Shih added. The disease affects the joints and the pain associated with the disease can persist for weeks, months or in some cases years.
■TOURISM
Changshu deal expected
The government of Changshu in China’s Jiangsu Province and five Taiwanese tourism associations were expected to sign an agreement on travel service quality assurance yesterday. The agreement was to be signed during a workshop on tourism exchanges to be held in Taipei, said Lin Tsung-min (林聰敏), an executive at a local travel agency that arranged the visit of an official 59-member Changshu delegation and more than 500 tourists from the city. The group of tourists is the first visiting Taiwan under an initiative proposed last year by, the head of Jiangsu Province, that Taiwan and Jiangsu each send 100,000 tourists to the other side this year.
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