DIPLOMACY
Ma praises Dominican envoy
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) met outgoing Dominican Republic Ambassador Victor Manuel Sanchez Pena at the Presidential Office yesterday, praising him as an expert in Taiwanese affairs and invited him to help promote Taiwan in his home country. Ma said he was delighted to meet with Sanchez before the envoy’s departure on Thursday following two stints as ambassador. Sanchez was posted to Taiwan for the first time in 1997 and served until 2000. He began his second stint in 2004. Ma praised Sanchez as a veteran ambassador who is qualified to be included as a “top 10 expert” in Taiwanese affairs as he has spent so much time in the country.
SOCIETY
Boat propeller kills diver
A man was killed on Sunday when he was struck in the head by a raft’s propeller blade while diving in waters off Pingtung County, a witness said. Han Chia-chou (韓嘉洲), the head of a whale conservation group in Pingtung, said he was about to enter the port at Houbihu (後壁湖) at about 3pm when he saw four individuals equipped with heavy diving gear emerging from the water. Three rafts, meanwhile, were heading into the port when one of the raft operators, surnamed Chen (陳), shouted for help to coast guard officers after discovering the surface of the water had turned red with blood, Han said. Han said the officers immediately dived into the water to search for the victim, who was later pulled out by a diving coach. The victim, surnamed Wang (王), suffered a fractured skull and did not have any vital signs. According to regulations, divers cannot dive within the waterway and it was not immediately clear what the divers were doing there. The coast guard immediately launched an investigation into Wang’s death.
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