DIPLOMACY
Former Italian PM arrives
Former Italian prime minister and lifetime Senator Mario Monti yesterday arrived in Taiwan on a three-day visit to promote bilateral exchanges. Monti, who serves as rector and president of the Milan-based Bocconi University, is accompanied by his wife and is to meet President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lin (林永樂) and other senior government officials, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. Monti is also to visit the Taipei-based Straits Exchange Foundation, a semi-official organization set up by the government to handle technical or business exchanges with China, the ministry said. The visit is aimed at promoting exchanges and cooperation between Taiwan and Italy in economic, commercial and cultural areas, the ministry said. Monti, an economist who served as prime minister from 2011 to 2013, gave a lecture at National Chengchi University in Taipei, a sister institution to Bocconi University.
TRAFFIC
City mulls headlight idea
Motorists are to be asked to turn on their headlights whenever they drive on Kaohsiung roads, including during the day, in a bid to reduce traffic accidents, a city official said yesterday. Kaohsiung Transportation Bureau director general Chen Ching-fu (陳勁甫) said the bureau is striving to cut the death rate from traffic accidents by 4 percent, adding that the city would take initiatives on several fronts, including through a public-awareness campaign. Chen said statistics show that headlights help cut daytime collisions by at least 5.9 percent. The city government is to take the lead in the campaign, pushing for city vehicles to have their headlights on at all times, while taxis and motorists will be asked to follow suit, Chen 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