TAIPEI
Hello Kitty on gondola cars
The Maokong Gondola has begun a year of Hello Kitty rides, with the cable cars decorated with Hello Kitty images. The Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) had signed an agreement with Japanese cartoon character producer Sanrio Co. General manager Tan Gwa-guang (譚國光) said all 145 cars are to be painted and each station decorated. Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) is to visit the Taipei Zoo MRT station this morning and take a ride with a group of young children to promote the newly redecorated system.
CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Bureau seeks agents’ release
National Security Bureau (NSB) Director Tsai Der-sheng (蔡得勝) on Wednesday said the government has been trying to free two senior intelligence agents kidnapped and held by China for the past seven years. Military Intelligence Bureau colonels Chu Kung-hsun (朱恭訓) and Hsu Chang-kuo (徐章國) were kidnapped in Vietnam and taken to China in 2006. Tsai said the bureau and intelligence bureau established an ad hoc group tasked with rescuing the colonels in May 2009. “Through different channels, either in public or secretly, we have been working hard to seek their release for the past few years,” he said, but declined to give details. The Supreme Court last year upheld the ruling of the Military Supreme Court and sentenced former army general Lo Hsien-che (羅賢哲) to life imprisonment for spying for China. Lo, the highest-ranking official ever to be convicted of spying in Taiwan, reportedly started working for China as a spy in 2004. He was suspected of handing over information related to a project giving Taiwanese military access to US intelligence systems.
SOCIETY
Women outnumber men
The nation’s female population surpassed that of men for the first time in 100 years at the end of last month, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. As of Nov. 30, there were 11,684,133 women in Taiwan compared with 11,683,187 men, the ministry said. The disparity of 946 in favor of women caused Taiwan’s gender ratio — the number of men per 100 women — to fall below 100 to 99.99 for the first time in a century, Deputy Minister of the Interior Hsiao Chia-chi (蕭家淇) said. Hsiao said Taiwan’s gender ratio used to exceed 100, as the country had more men than women for decades. Compared with many other countries, Taiwan’s gender ratio is relatively high. In 2011, Taiwan’s gender ratio was 100.6, higher than Norway’s 100.5, South Korea’s 100.4, Mexico’s 94.8, Austria’s 95.1, Japan’s 94.8, France’s 93.9 and Italy’s 93.7, but lower than India’s 107.8, Malaysia’s 106.1 and China’s 105.2.
MILITARY
New base to finish in July
The military has given July next year as a concrete date for the completion of the new Ministry of National Defense headquarters, indicating the end is in sight for work that has been planned since 1997. Ministry spokesman Major General David Lo (羅紹和) said yesterday that defense operations are to be moved to the new complex, located in Taipei’s Dazhi (大直) neighborhood, next year from the current headquarters near the Presidential Office. Development of the 19.5 hectare site, originally set to be completed by 2008, has been plagued by a string of setbacks since construction work began, including the death of the original architect. As of Monday, the complex was about 80 percent complete, the ministry said.
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