■ANIMALS
No baby pandas this year
Taipei Zoo has all but given up hope that its pair of pandas will breed this year, a zoo official said yesterday. Tuan Tuan (團團) and Yuan Yuan (圓圓), who arrived in Taiwan in 2008, did not mate between March and this month, when pandas are normally in heat, in all likelihood meaning no cubs until next year at the earliest, said Taipei Zoo director Jason Yeh (葉傑生). The zoo tried various measures to create the right mood, including playing tapes of panda mating sounds and switching their enclosures to stimulate them with each other’s scent. “It is unlikely the pandas will breed this year but we think the chances are very good next year as they are healthy, they get along with each other and they will also be more mature,” Yeh said. Taiwan has an extra incentive to encourage the couple to do what so often fails to come naturally for pandas because it is allowed to keep any cubs. Beijing usually only loans its pandas, with strict provisos that any progeny must be sent to China.
■DIPLOMACY
Ma receives award
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has received the 2010 Leadership in International Relations Award from the US Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute (CHLI) in recognition of his statesmanship, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. Taiwan’s representative to the US Jason Yuan (袁健生) accepted the award on Ma’s behalf at a ceremony in Washington on Thursday, with Ma giving a thank you speech via teleconference. Ma said he was honored to receive the award and hoped that the US would support Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations, MOFA said in a statement. Ma also thanked US Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, chairman of CHLI, the US government, and the US Congress for supporting the Taiwan Relations Act. He also called on the US to provide Taiwan with F16 C/D fighter jets to enhance the nation’s self-defense capability.
■POLITICS
New EasyCard head named
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday announced the appointment of Liu I-cheng (劉奕成), former executive vice president of Cathay Financial Holdings, as chairman of the Taipei EasyCard Corp. Liu, recommended by his predecessor, Sean Lien (連勝文), will formally take over the position on June 1 after the company’s board members approve the appointment. Hau lauded Liu as a great talent in consumer finance, saying he expected him to continue expanding the EasyCard’s operation as an electronic wallet and seek closer cooperation with financial companies. “I am glad and proud that a talented young man like Mr Liu is willing to give up great offers from foreign companies and decide to take this challenging and less well paid job,” Hau said. Liu pledged to make the EasyCard as convenient as Octopus Card in Hong Kong. The 40-year-old Liu served as a board member at the company four years ago.
■AVIATION
New routes head to Japan
A shorter air route between Hualien and the Japanese islands of Ishigaki and Yonaguni will be available from July 28, reducing the flight time by at least 13 minutes, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) announced yesterday. At present, Taiwan’s TransAsia Airways provides three charter flights per week between Hualien and Ishigaki. It is also planning to launch a new service between Hualien and Yonaguni.
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