CRIME
Ex-NYC official indicted
A former National Youth Commission (NYC) official was indicted on corruption charges yesterday by the Taipei Prosecutor’s Office on suspicion of fixing competitions and pocketing prizes. Chen Yung-hsuan (陳永璿), confidential secretary of former commission minister Jack Lee (李允傑), and contractor Kai Kuan-yu (蓋冠宇) were both charged with corruption. Prosecutors said Chen, who was responsible for organizing four contests for the commission, falsified the names of more than 200 prize winners and kept the prizes. Chen and Lee have confessed and returned about NT$1 million (US$33,000) and two iPads, prosecutors said. A computer engineer surnamed Yu (余) was also indicted on suspicion of helping Chen enter the commission’s Web site to forge names on the lists of winners. An investigation was launched after Democratic Progressive Party legislators Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) and Liu Chao-hao (劉櫂豪) revealed the scandal in a press conference, with two students from Huafan University saying they had never taken part in the competitions, but that their names appeared on the list of winners.
CULTURE
Renowned cellist to play
Latvian cellist Mischa Maisky is to hold two concerts next month in celebration of his 65th birthday, organizers said on Sunday. Maisky is to perform Bach’s Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello at the concerts, said The Management of New Arts, which is organizing the shows. The concerts’ audiences will be asked to write birthday wishes to Maisky, who will select 65 people from each concert to receive CDs as gifts. The cellist will perform at the Tainan Municipal Cultural Center on May 21 and at the National Concert Hall in Taipei on May 22.
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