■ CRIME
New child sex laws mulled
The government is considering tightening its child sex abuse laws following public outrage at three cases where defendants were controversially cleared or given a light jail sentence. In one case involving a three-year-old girl, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by prosecutors, saying they had failed to prove the girl was opposed to the sexual activity. Another case saw a male suspect charged with molesting his two-year-old niece acquitted as judges said they believed the victim was mistaken about the time of the alleged crime. “The Ministry of Justice is considering amending a provision of the Criminal Code … so as to better protect the rights of children,” a ministry official said. The third case saw a child abuser jailed for just 38 months — less than half the sentence sought by prosecutors. The rulings drew severe criticism from child protection groups, who called for the legal authorities to do more to save youngsters from abuse. The Garden of Hope Foundation has demanded the removal of what it called “dinosaur judges” and said the call has won the support of 270,000 people on its Web site. It also threatened to launch a mass protest if the authorities did not respond to its appeal.
■ ECONOMY
Delegation to recruit
The nation’s top economic planner will lead a delegation, which will include Minister without Portfolio Chang Jin-fu (張進福), to the US and Canada on Thursday to recruit high-tech talent. The delegation, led by Chairwoman of the Council for Economic Planning and Development Christina Liu (劉憶如), will visit Los Angeles, Boston, Austin San Francisco and Toronto, where they will interview overseas Taiwanese and other professionals for positions in Taiwan’s high-tech industry. At a time when the recovery of the US economy is still slow, the delegation will highlight Taiwan’s relatively strong economy, its cosmopolitan work and living environment and career development opportunities for high-tech professionals, Chang said. During the trip, Chang will give speeches in Boston and San Francisco to promote a global investment solicitation campaign that will start in October. The Taiwanese government assembles high-tech talent recruitment delegations every year. Later this year, a delegation will head to Seattle, Boston, New York and Toronto and visit Intel, Google, Microsoft, IBM and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on a tour aimed at recruiting professionals in the field of cloud computing, Chang said.
■ CONSUMER RIGHTS
Sunglasses lack labels
The Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection recently inspected 29 types of sunglasses on the market and found that although all passed product safety tests, more than 80 percent did not have proper labeling. Bureau officials have issued warnings to the makers of the sunglasses to make improvements immediately or face fines between NT$100,000 and NT$1 million.
■ ECONOMY
NFA ready to aid New Zealand
The National Fire Agency (NFA) is closely monitoring the situation in New Zealand after a magnitude 7 earthquake occurred there on Saturday, and is ready to send a search-and-rescue team if necessary, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. After learning of the earthquake, the fire agency instructed its special search-and-rescue team to prepare to join the disaster relief work, the ministry said. New Zealand told the OCHA there was no immediate need for international assistance, the ministry added.
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