FESTIVALS
‘Life of Pi’ actress to dance
An Indian actress who appeared in the movie Life of Pi will perform with a troupe of dancers during an Indian festival that runs through Nov. 10, organizers said at the event’s opening yesterday. Shravanthi Sainath, who plays Pi’s teenage sweetheart in Ang Lee’s (李安) Oscar-winning film, said she was thrilled to visit Taiwan for the second time and hoped to share the classical Indian dance Bharatanatyam. Sainath will be performing with the famed Sri Devi Nrithyalaya Bharatanatyam troupe in Taipei, New Taipei City (新北市) and Greater Kaohsiung, as well as hold workshops to introduce locals to Indian culture. One of the dances, Life of Prince, will be the highlight of the festival, as the theme is adapted from Life of Pi and tells the story of a prince who survives an adventure to unite with a heroine, played by Sainath.
CRIME
NIA head urges cooperation
National Immigration Agency (NIA) Director-General Hsieh Li-kung (謝立功) yesterday talked about Taiwan’s efforts to fight human trafficking at a forum cosponsored by the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Federation of Women Lawyers in the Chinese territory. Hsieh called for strengthening cooperation among nations to deter human trafficking and ensure safe movement of people in the Asia-Pacific region, adding that Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and Macau already have substantive cooperation in this regard. He said his agency had worked with China on many cases, including breaking a major human trafficking ring in September. He said the mode of cooperation with Hong Kong and Macau might be different, but if a more extensive network were built, there would be less room for criminal activity.
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