CRIME
HK pair repatriated
Two young women from Hong Kong who trashed their hotel rooms earlier this year were repatriated after completing their jail sentences. The 20-year-old and 19-year-old made headlines earlier this year after leaving a trail of trashed rooms, false identities and graffiti — including “Taiwan is China” — and stealing a television from one hotel. The pair were arrested in March at a budget hotel in Greater Tainan. They were sentenced in May to five-month terms after trials at the Tainan District Court and the Taipei District Court for theft, embezzlement and forgery. One was also handed a combined penal detention — a sentence for lighter crimes — of 120 days, while the other received 130 days. They entered Yilan Prison on June 17 before being transferred to the immigrant holding center in the middle of last month. By law, they will not be allowed to re-enter the country within five years.
TRAVEL
Thai visa offer popular
More than 200 people lined up before noon on Monday at the Thailand Trade and Economic Office in Taipei to take advantage of a free-visa offer that ends on Friday. The crowd was drawn by the chance to save the NT$1,200 that Taiwanese have to pay for a tourist visa to the kingdom. Bangkok launched the free visa as part of its efforts to attract tourists after months of political turmoil in the kingdom ended earlier this year. The trade office said it had received about 1,300 applications per day since the program began on Aug. 9, an 85 percent increase over the number of applications received in July. Tourism Authority of Thailand statistics show 187,662 Taiwanese visiting the kingdom during the first six months of 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