SOCIETY
Couples register for wedding
Eight same-sex couples are among 131 couples that have registered to take part in an Oct. 24 mass wedding sponsored by the Taipei City Government, Taipei Department of Civil Affairs Commissioner Lan Shih-tsung (藍世聰) said yesterday. Although same-sex marriages are not legal in Taiwan, the city would “provide support for non-conventional families,” he said without elaborating. Everyone is entitled to a partner and marriage rights, and the department has based its decision to sponsor a mass wedding on the principles of respect, tolerance and equality, he added. Next month’s mass wedding is the first to be open to same-sex couples. There is to be a two-hour seminar for all the registered couples on Sept. 25, Lan said. Couples who have registered, but fail to attend the seminar would forfeit their rights to take part in the ceremony.
SOCIETY
Park fire death toll rises
A 26-year-old woman died yesterday morning from injuries she sustained in the June 27 fire at Formosa Fun Coast (八仙海岸) water park in New Taipei City, bringing the death toll from the disaster to 12. Taoyuan General Hospital said the woman, surnamed Wu (吳), had suffered burns to more than 72 percent of her body, and died of multiple organ failure. Wu’s family thanked the hospital’s staff for their care and efforts over the past two months. The Ministry of Health and Welfare said that 188 of the 508 victims of the fire remained hospitalized as of yesterday, 57 in intensive care and 33 in critical condition. A report by the New Taipei City Fire Department last week said the fire was sparked by colored cornstarch that was being sprayed during the event coming into contact with the surface of the extremely hot light bulbs in some of the stage lighting.
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