TRAVEL
Warning on Japanese deer
Visitors to Nikko, Japan, are being warned to be on the alert for deer, after two Taiwanese were injured after being charged by a wild deer on Sunday. The two women, both 54, fell on Sunday morning after being startled by the deer near the railway station in Nikko, a local police spokesman said yesterday. The animal charged toward the pair before bolting into a nearby shop, where it smashed dozens of bottles, and then ran off into nearby woods, he said. “The tourist season will be in full swing soon,” he said. “We wanted to get the word out and tell people what happened.” Nikko, alongside Tokyo and Kyoto, is a popular destinations for visitors to Japan.
FILM
‘Beyond Beauty’ wins award
The documentary Beyond Beauty — Taiwan From Above (看見台灣) has won a special jury award for creative excellence and a gold medal for cinematography at the WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival. The documentary, directed by Chi Po-lin (齊柏林), won a Special Jury Award on Saturday as an independent theatrical feature, one of 10 film categories at the festival, which opened on April 4 and closed on Sunday. Panelists also recognized the film’s cinematography with a gold medal — the second-highest honor in a secondary category. Chi said at the award ceremony that he made the film hoping to introduce Taiwanese to the beauty of their own land and show them how development has damaged it. The award will help more people learn more about Taiwan, Chi said. Other award-winning works from Taiwan at the festival included Jam (果醬) by Liu Yueh-ming (劉岳銘), which won a Special Jury Award as an independent short. The Houston festival, now in its 47th year, drew 4,500 entries from 33 countries this year.
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