■ ENERGY
Taiwan on IAEA safe list
Taiwan has, for the fourth consecutive year, been placed on an international list of countries whose nuclear materials are all used for peaceful purposes, the Atomic Energy Council reported yesterday. Taiwan's ability to use its domestic nuclear materials peacefully and safely was acknowledged again by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the council said. The IAEA's announcement put paid to media speculation about the purpose of Taiwan’s nuclear development and confirmed the government's consistent policy of “not developing, producing, acquiring, storing, nor applying” nuclear weapons, the council said.
■ GOVERNMENT
Taoyuan gets initial nod
Taoyuan County, with a population exceeding 2 million, will be upgraded to a “quasi-municipality” on Jan. 1, the Ministry of the Interior said. The decision still has to be ratified by the Cabinet, Vice Minister of the Interior Chien Tai-lang (簡太郎) said. If approved, Taoyuan will enjoy similar status to the four new special municipalities — Sinbei City, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung — that will be established later this year, bringing them on par with Taipei and Kaohsiung cities. The ministry received notification from the Taoyuan County Government on June 8 that its population had exceeded 2 million and held a meeting last month to discuss the issue. In 2007, the legislature approved amendments stating that counties with populations of more than 2 million are eligible for “quasi-municipality” status.
■ CRIME
Wanted: paint splasher
Taipei City police yesterday were looking for at least one person who has been splashing paint on newly paved roads. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Ouyang Lung (歐陽龍) filed a complaint with the police yesterday, saying that aside from marring the roads with white paint, the suspect's action posed a threat to motorists because of the slippery road surface. Ouyang said the suspect appeared to have repeated the same offense in 11 locations, including a portion of Roosevelt Rd Sec 5. However, the city's Criminal Investigation Corps (CIC) said surveillance cameras at those 11 locations had just been installed and were not yet functioning. “It's a pity the security cameras have not yet been hooked up, so we didn’t get any image of the suspect,” CIC deputy Lee Wen-chang (李文章) said. “A special task force will be set up to tackle this case.”
■ SOCIETY
Miaoli farmer dies
The death of a 72 year-old woman in Miaoli's Dapu Borough (大埔) yesterday sparked speculation whether her death had something to do with the county government's recent land seizures. The woman, surnamed Chu (朱), was found unconscious yesterday morning in her garage. She died on the way to hospital. The family suspected she may have committed suicide because she was found next to a bottle of poison. Chu's family was one of the 24 Dapu households protesting the county government's expropriation of their farmland. Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said he had asked his staffers to find out whether her death had anything to do with the land seizures. “I don’t know the cause of her death, though I’ve learned that the woman suffered from some pain. She had depression or something,” Wu said. “According to [my staff], the farmland issue is almost resolved,” with the government looking into compensating those whose lands were expropriated with a similar sized parcel of land, he 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