CRIME
Man arrested over threats
A 55-year-old man, surnamed Wu (吳), was arrested yesterday for claiming he wanted to kill President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義). The Sijhih District (汐止), New Taipei City (新北市) resident made a telephone call at 5am to the Taipei City Government’s 1999 public service hotline threatening to kill Ma and the premier, Taipei police said. “The suspect Wu has been unemployed for a long time, plus it was recently the one-year anniversary of his mother’s death, so he was in a bad mood and was drinking from 7pm until 3am,” Xinyi District Police Precinct deputy Shih Ming-chen (石明哲) said. “He started calling 110, 119 and the 1999 hotline. The 1999 hotline later informed our precinct [about the call.]” Taipei police arrested the suspect at his home about noon for questioning. According to police, the suspect said he had no real plan to kill Ma or the premier, and he was only making complaints after getting drunk. He could faces charges of making threats.
DIPLOMACY
Lawmakers head for US
A group of legislators across party lines was to leave for the US last night to lobby Washington to approve a request to acquire F-16C/D aircraft and include Taiwan in its visa waiver program. The delegation is comprised of members of the Taiwan-USA Inter-Parliamentary Amity Association, led by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lii Ming-shing (李明星). The group will stop in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Washington and New York during the 11-day trip. The lawmakers are expected to call on the US Department of State, the Pentagon, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Lii said the delegation would visit US representatives David Wu (吳振偉) and Judy Mary Chu (趙美心) in the hope that they will help push the US government to sell the fighters to Taiwan and encourage progress on the visa waiver front. In Arizona, the lawmakers will visit Luke Air Force Base, the only active duty F-16 training base in the world, Lii said. KMT Legislator Liao Wan-ju (廖婉汝) said the primary goal of the trip was to help bring about the F-16C/D aircraft sale. If the US can’t authorize the sale, then hopefully it will approve an upgrade for Taiwan’s F-16A/B fleet, Liao said.
EDUCATION
MOFA grants distributed
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) handed out scholarships yesterday to three graduate students specializing in East Asian studies in a bid to encourage more academic work related to countries in the region. The students were awarded research grants totaling up to NT$10,000 per month, as well as additional funding for overseas field studies, a ministry official said. Despite the frequent economic and social interaction between Taiwan and East Asian countries, there has been a lack of academic study on relevant topics, Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) said. Not as many people as expected applied for the scholarships, a ministry official said, but added that the ministry would continue to hold the scholarship competition each year.
URBAN AFFAIRS
Eric Chu visits California
New Taipei City (新北市) Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) visited sister community Los Angeles County on Tuesday and met Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who said he hoped to visit Taiwan again at the end of this year. Chu and his delegation visited another sister community, Baltimore County, Maryland.
CRIME
Fraud suspects repatriated
Fourteen Taiwanese fraud suspects deported to China from the Philippines in February returned to Taiwan yesterday afternoon to stand trial, according to law enforcement officials. They were arrested in the Philippines in December and Taipei demanded that they be handed over to Taiwanese authorities. However, the Philippines sent them to China on Feb. 2, sparking a diplomatic row that soured ties between Taipei and Manila. Through negotiations between Taiwanese law enforcement authorities and their Chinese counterparts, China finally agreed to repatriate the 14 individuals, who are suspected of having defrauded mostly Chinese nationals of 140 million yuan (US$21.7 million) through telephone scams.
CRIME
Juice producer indicted
Owner of juice producer Ging Kuo Wang (金果王), Chen A-ho (陳阿和), was indicted yesterday for allegedly buying questionable clouding agents from Yu Shen Chemical Co and adding them to the drinks it produces, prosecutors from Taipei’s Shilin District (士林) said yesterday. Chen’s son and two employees were also indicted. Prosecutors said the four defendants were charged with violations of the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法) and offenses against public safety and fraud. Prosecutors requested the court sentence Chen to 12 years in prison and fine him NT$10 million (US$3.3 million) and that his company be fined NY$30 million. Prosecutors requested that the other three defendants each be sentenced to six years in prison and fined NT$8 million. Food supplier Yu Shen Chemical Co has been accused of using di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, or DEHP, in clouding agents they sold to food
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