ENTERTAINMENT
Envoy going to Hollywood
Representative to the US Jason Yuan (袁健生) has been invited to attend the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday in Hollywood. It is the first time an ambassador-level official from Taiwan has received an invitation for the annual ceremony, said Lee Tai-kuai (李大塊), head of the press division at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles. The decision to invite Yuan followed a visit to Taiwan last year by Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for the 47th Golden Horse Awards — the Taiwanese equivalent of the Oscars. Davis was impressed by Taiwan’s booming film industry, Lee said. Also invited are senior film critic Wen Tien-hsiang, a member of the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival executive committee, and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Justin Chou (周守訓), who served as chairman of the Motion Picture and Drama Association, the main organizer of the Asia Pacific Film Festival in Taipei last December.
FOOD
Tainted seafood rejected
Since the start of the year, four shipments of imported seafood and seafood products have been intercepted and rejected because of high amounts of residual formaldehyde. The organic compound can be added to seafood to keep it fresh. The rejected shipments comprised cuttlefish from Japan that had residual formaldehyde up to 55 parts per million (ppm), and frozen seafood products from Vietnam, the Philippines and China that had 39ppm, 37ppm and 22.9ppm respectively. By law foodstuffs should not contain any formaldehyde. Chiang Shou-shan (江守山), a nephrologist at Shin-Kong Wu Ho-Su Memorial Hospital, said formaldehyde is thought to be linked to certain types of cancer.
SPORT
Club gears up for tourney
A Taoyuan country club is sparing no expense in preparing for Taiwan’s first LPGA tournament later this year. “We’re ready to stage the best-ever tournament to market Taiwan and to welcome new stars in the sport,” Sunrise Golf and Country Club chairman Hsu Tien-ya (許典雅) said yesterday. Hsu made his comments as LPGA official Jim Haley paid a second visit to the club and praised Hsu’s efforts. Hsu said NT$200 million (US$6.72 million) will be spent on extensive renovations to the club, guest rooms and courses. Haley, who visited the club in October, said he did not take a good look at it last time as he was completing his schedule in a hurry, but nevertheless praised the improvements that have been made. The Taiwan Open will see 80 players competing from Oct. 20 to Oct. 23.
SOCIETY
Marriage law changed
The Executive Yuan yesterday passed an amendment to articles 973 and 980 of the Civil Code to bring the minimum ages at which men and women can be engaged and get married into line with each other. The minimum ages for engagement and marriage for men and women were set at 15 and 16 for women, and 17 and 18 for men. The amendment passed yesterday raises the age limit for women to the same as that for men. In a comment, the Ministry of Justice said the reason for the amendment was that the regulations in the Civil Code do not comply with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
TRAVEL
Fuel surcharges to rise
Fuel surcharges for air travel are expected to rise next month as political turmoil spreads in the Middle East and North Africa, the Civil Aeronautics Administration said yesterday. The fees, which apply to all departing passengers, have more than doubled over the past two years, reaching NT$670 per passenger for a short-haul flight and NT$1,742 for a long-haul flight this month. In 2009, the surcharges were NT$298 and NT$774 respectively.
SOCIETY
Tribal holidays recognized
As of yesterday, Aborigines across the country are able to take days off on officially recognized traditional tribal holidays, the Council of Indigenous Peoples said. In a statement, the council said all Aborigines, “whether in the military, a public servant, a laborer or a student, may take a traditional tribal holiday off” as long as they have a household registration document or other document that proves their ethnic identity. “This is a big step forward in our attempt to promote cultural diversity,” Council of Indigenous Peoples Minister Sun Ta-chuan (孫大川) said.
EMPLOYMENT
Science jobs to grow
The nation’s three major science parks are expected to offer 40,000 more jobs over the next three years as their employee numbers reached another new high last month, the National Science Council said. Among the job openings, 7,000 will be offered by the Hsinchu Science Park, 18,000 to 20,000 by the Southern Taiwan Science Park and 16,000 by the Central Taiwan Science Park, the council said. The parks had a total of 221,641 workers as of the end of last month, breaking December’s record of 219,133, the council 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