LAW
Death penalty upheld
In a 10th retrial, the Supreme Court yesterday upheld a ruling by the High Court sentencing Hsu Wei-chan (徐偉展), also known as the “Chungshan Wolf,” to death for robbery and murder. In October 1996, Hsu lured a woman into a taxi. Hiding in the back seat, his underage cousin, surnamed Pan (潘) handcuffed the victim and robbed her. The two men then drove the woman to a mountainous area of then-Taipei County, where they strangled her to death and buried her. Since the five executions on March 4, the total number of prisoners on death row had gone down to 40. With the addition of Hsu, it is now 41.
SOCIETY
Japanese man found dead
A Japanese man fell to his death from a university building in Taipei, authorities said yesterday. Police have begun an investigation into the incident. The unidentified man, aged 38, was in Taiwan on a tourist visa and had no relatives in the country, police said. His body was found outside a building in Taipei belonging to Chinese Culture University’s School of Continuing Education. He was not a student there, the university said.
DIPLOMACY
Free entry to Malaysia soon
Malaysia will grant Republic of China (ROC) passport holders visa-free privileges by the end of the month at the earliest, Chinese-language newspapers in Malaysia quoted Malaysian Tourism Minister Ng Yen Yen as saying, adding that the foreign ministry had informed Taiwanese authorities of the decision. The reports quoted Ng as saying that the visa-free measures would be implemented at the end of the month because there were still technical details that needed to be discussed.
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