LEISURE
Hotels offer ‘green’ discount
Travelers staying at one of 79 hotels across the nation for more than one night will be eligible for a NT$100 discount on their bill if they do not ask for a change of bedsheets and towels, as part of a program by the Tourism Bureau to promote water conservation amid the worst drought to hit the nation in nearly a decade. From Saturday until March 31, travelers who stay at listed hotels can reap the rewards of saving water while also saving cash, the bureau said yesterday. The offer only applies to individuals and not group tours, the bureau said, adding that it has cooperated with hotels because the sector is a big consumer of water. So far, 65 hotels have joined the program, with more expected as it goes on, the bureau added. A complete list of participating hotels is available in Chinese at taiwanstay.net.tw.
CRIME
Vietnamese workers arrested
Five Vietnamese were arrested on Tuesday in Hsinchu in connection with the killing of a fellow countryman, police said. The deceased, surnamed Nguyen, and a dozen other Vietnamese workers were invited to celebrate the birthday of a female coworker at a small restaurant in New Taipei City’s Sijhih District (汐止) on Dec. 6, police said. One of the men allegedly became jealous after seeing the birthday girl interacting closely with Nguyen and started a fight, police said. The man who allegedly initiated the fight and several friends waited outside the restaurant, where they reportedly attacked Nguyen and his friends with clubs and fruit knives, police said, adding that Nguyen suffered five stab wounds to his back. Police tracked the five suspects to an apartment in Hsinchu on Tuesday and sent them to the Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office for investigation.
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