CRIME
Presidential Office targeted
Law enforcement authorities are tracking the IP address of an e-mail received by the Presidential Office on Monday threatening a suicide attack against the office and legislative buildings, Taipei police said yesterday. In the anonymous message, the sender said they would crash their motorcycle into the buildings while carrying a canister of gasoline because they were angry over the sluggish economy, police said. Police denied a media report saying the sender had been arrested and was being questioned. A suicide attack occurred in Taipei in 2003, when a 46-year-old man drove a truck carrying drums of gasoline into the Boai Special District (博愛特區), which has a high concentration of government buildings. The man, who died in the incident, slammed the truck into the front of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, which is only 20m from the Presidential Office.
SOCIETY
Fishing crew saved from fire
All five crew members aboard a fishing boat that caught fire a day earlier were rescued from the sea and flown to Greater Kaohsiung yesterday, the Coast Guard Administration said. The 39.25 tonne boat caught fire about 19km off the Pratas Islands (also known as the Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) after departing from Pingtung County on Saturday. Two Taiwanese and three Indonesian crew members who had abandoned the boat were floating on chunks of styrofoam for days, the coast guard said. The administration received a report of the accident on Monday morning and immediately formed a task force to track down the boat, registered in Liouciou Township (琉球). A 16-member group on two vessels and a transport aircraft sent by the administration found the fishermen about 9km off the islands on Monday afternoon.
CRIME
‘Baby vendor’ sentenced
A female maternity assistant, surnamed Tseng (曾), was sentenced to nine years in prison by the Taiwan High Court yesterday for selling babies and forging birth certificates. The ruling said Tseng, who was not a doctor, opened a clinic in Guansi Township (關西), Hsinchu County, to help women give birth. Between October 2006 and July 2007, Tseng allegedly sold two babies for roughly NT$300,000 (US$10,000) each. The two infants were born at her clinic, but the parents did not want to keep them. The ruling said Tseng also forged five birth certificates for her clients for various purposes. Tseng was charged with selling infants or children and forgery, the ruling said. Tseng can appeal the ruling with the Supreme Court.
TRADE
WTO chief welcomes Lai
Permanent representative to the WTO Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) presented her credentials to WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday. In welcoming Lai, Lamy recognized Taiwan’s contributions to the WTO’s promotion of the Doha Development Round over the past 10 years and praised Taiwan for providing technical assistance to developing and under-developed countries. The Doha Development Round is the WTO’s current trade negotiation agenda and was started in November 2001. During the meeting, Lai and Pascal exchanged views on issues related to multilateral and regional trade, economic cooperation, and cross-strait ties. Lai promised that Taiwan would fulfil its duty as a WTO member and defend the multilateral trade system on the basis of equality.
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