CULTURE
Festival set for July 15
The fifth annual music festival on the outlying island of Penghu will begin on July 15, organizers said yesterday. This year’s Summer Music Festival, which spans three days, will feature a series of activities, including music competitions, beach ball games, fashion markets and fairs, according to Penghu County Tourism Association. For nature and culture lovers, there will be package tours in which people can enjoy local scenery and experience traditional culture, the association said, adding that there would also be a charity fundraiser concert on the last evening, with all funds donated to local charities and associations. Moreover, instead of finishing at 10pm, the three-day party will go on until midnight every night.
POLITICS
KMT spokesmen announced
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Lai Su-ju (賴素如) will take over as the party spokesman after incumbent spokesman Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) accepted the party’s nomination to run in January’s legislative election in Greater Tainan. The KMT said in a press release that it also invited Chen Yi-hsin (陳以信), who was an assistant to former legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖), to serve as party spokesman. Lai will also double as the director of the KMT’s Culture and Communication Committee.Su tendered his resignation to focus on the legislative campaign. His resignation will become effective on Monday. Chen Yi-hsin, 39, worked for the KMT’s fundamental rhetoric team in 2004 before leaving for England to study economics at the University of London.
HEALTH
Health pact to take effect
Taiwan and China announced simultaneously yesterday that a medical and health cooperation agreement signed late last year was scheduled to take effect today. After the pact takes effect, the two sides will cooperate further on combating epidemics, as well as on pharmaceutical safety management and research and development, traditional Chinese medicine research and safety management of Chinese herbal drugs, emergency rescue and other areas on which both sides can agree. Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, signed the pact on Dec. 21 to promote public health on both sides of the strait and to promote medical and health cooperation. The SEF said in a press release that according to the terms of the pact, both sides should complete related procedures and notify the other side in writing. The pact will take effect the day after each side receives notification from the other.
EMPLOYMENT
No jobs for disadvantaged
Only 2.6 percent of students who graduate from special education high schools manage to find a job, according to a recent study by the Syin-lu Social Welfare Foundation. Although a majority of students who suffer from mental and physical disabilities are eager to enter the job market, few are able to realize their dreams, said Chou Yi-chun (周怡君), a senior consultant at the foundation. Of the 1,461 such students who graduated last year, only 38 were given a job at a shelter factory, data showed. “The rest are left with no choice but to stay at home,” Chou said, while calling on the government to pay more attention to the issue. “If the problem remains unsolved, they will eventually become society’s burden,” she said. The study, conducted from November to last month, involved 176 teachers working in 23 different special education schools nationwide.
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