DIPLOMACY
Tuvaluan minister visits
Tuvaluan Minister for Justice, Communication and Foreign Affairs Simon Kofe yesterday arrived in Taiwan for a six-day visit, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Kofe’s trip reaffirms bilateral relations, as it was made shortly after Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉) visited Tuvalu from Tuesday to Thursday last week, the ministry said. He is also the first Tuvaluan official to lead a delegation to Taiwan after Tuvalu in September elected a new government, it said. The Tuvaluan delegation is to meet President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) and other officials, as well as people involved in the agriculture, culture and food processing industries, it said.
WEATHER
Sunset to align in Taichung
The sunset is to align with certain streets in Taichung tomorrow, the Central Weather Bureau said on Friday in a release detailing its fifth forecast of sun alignments across the country this year. The bureau said that the alignment can be seen until Friday on Jingguo Road in Dajia District (大甲), lasting from 4:39pm to 4:59pm tomorrow and beginning two minutes later each day after that. It said it would solicit photographs of the alignment on its app, asking for information about when and where the images are taken, to improve its sun alignment forecast abilities. Interest in sunset alignments, which often take place on east-west streets in the city, has increased in the past few years, attracting large numbers of photographers, the bureau said.
CRIME
Thai man held for murder
A Thai migrant worker is suspected of hitting another Thai man with a blunt object during an argument on Friday night, which killed him, police said yesterday. At about 11:30pm, the suspect, 42, who worked in a vehicle maintenance factory in Taichung’s Taiping District (太平) argued with his 39-year-old Thai colleague for unknown reasons, Taichung police said, adding that he was under the influence of alcohol. During the quarrel, the men began fighting and the suspect allegedly grabbed a blunt object and hit the other man with it, police said. Police were notified and rushed to the scene with an ambulance. The victim, who was injured on his head, neck and abdomen, and was bleeding severely, was taken to hospital, but did not survive, they said. Police said they arrested the suspect at the scene and sent him to the Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office.
CRIME
Cannabis haul confiscated
A Canadian man was arrested late last month at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport trying to smuggle cannabis with an estimated street value of NT$80 million to NT$120 million (US$2.62 million to US$3.93 million) into the country, the Aviation Police Bureau said on Tuesday. The man landed in Taiwan on Oct. 30 on a direct flight from Toronto, carrying two pieces of checked luggage that were flagged during an X-ray scan, bureau officer Tien Wei-jen (田偉仁) said. Customs officers found that the two suitcases contained 30 vacuum-sealed bags filled with a total of 31.63kg of cannabis, Tien said. Under the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例), cannabis is classified as a Category 2 narcotic. The penalty for manufacturing, transporting or selling Category 2 narcotics ranges from seven years to life in prison and a fine of up to NT$10 million. The Canadian has been handed over to the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office, Tien 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