■ POLITICS
Two guilty of vote-buying
The Taoyuan District Court yesterday sentenced Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Liao Cheng-ching (廖正井) to three years and six months in prison on vote-buying charges. Liao’s vote captain Liao Ching-fu (廖慶福) was sentenced to two years and six months in jail. The verdict is not final. Asked for comment, Liao Cheng-ching protested his innocence, adding that he would appeal. The court said Liao Ching-fu gave five residents of Weiwu Village in Kuanyin Township (觀音) NT$25,000 in total when he was running for legislator in December 2007 and asked another resident, Liao Wen-chen (廖文振), to help the legislator buy votes at the price of NT$5,000 per person, the court said. The court also annulled Liao’s election victory in the first trial of another civil suit on the same charges. He has appealed the verdict.
■ SOCIETY
Gondola tower almost ready
The relocation of an unsafe tower on the Maokong Gondola system in Taipei City is expected to be completed in December, Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said yesterday. The gondola has been closed since Oct. 1 last year after support tower No. 16’s foundation and the hillside on which it sits were eroded by torrential rain brought by Typhoon Jangmei. In a policy report to the city council, Hau said the project began on June 26 and was scheduled to be completed by the end of December. Soil conservation measures are being adopted and a shaft is being built at the new site of the tower, Hau said. Meanwhile, the city government has since Dec. 16 been carrying out work to reinforce the slope where the tower was originally situated, he said. The work is set to be completed by Dec. 15 this year, he added.
■ FOREIGN AID
Hand offered to Guatemala
Taiwan will donate US$500,000 in relief aid to Guatemala, one of its allies in Latin America, to help alleviate a food shortage caused by drought, an official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The donation will be handed over to the Guatemalan government by the embassy there for humanitarian purposes, said Lin Cheng-hui (林正惠), deputy director-general of the ministry’s Bureau of Central and South American Affairs. Guatemala has had a prolonged dry spell this year, which has extended to November because of the El Nino effect. The drought has affected the harvest of staples like maize, red beans and rice, resulting in food shortages and an increase in food prices, Lin said. The price of food has risen above what most poor people in Guatemala can afford, he added.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Meat-free Mondays touted
A civic group that is urging people to refrain from eating meat every Monday to help reduce greenhouse gases has set up a Web site to promote its cause. The site, www.meatfree.org.tw, will serve as a platform for members of the group to exchange their experiences in not eating meat, said Hsu Jen-hsiu (徐仁修), one of the group’s leaders. Livestock emit large volumes of methane into the atmosphere, which contributes more to global warming than the emissions produced by all the vehicles around the world, Hsu said. Hsu said his group is recruiting individual, group and restaurant members. Group members should serve meat-free dishes in their cafeterias every Monday, while restaurant members should offer a menu where one-third of the dishes come without meat, Hsu said. Individual members will be encouraged to eat meat-free meals every Monday, he said.
■ DEFENSE
Forum to open in Virginia
An annual conference on Taiwan-US strategic security cooperation will be held in Charlottesville, Virginia, from Sunday to Tuesday, organizers said. The eighth US-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference will bring together senior officials and academics from the two countries to discuss security issues of mutual concern, organizers said. The US-Taiwan Business Council, which groups US companies with interests in Taiwan, has organized the event annually since 2002, when then-defense minister Tang Yiau-min (湯曜明) represented Taiwan at the first meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida. Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the US-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference, said on Monday the agenda for this year’s meeting would focus on US-Taiwan defense cooperation and Taiwan’s future defense and security needs. The conference will discuss Taiwan’s military transformation and strategic changes, military modernization, integration and defense innovation, Hammond-Chambers said. Wallace Gregson, US assistant secretary of defense in charge of Asia-Pacific security affairs; David Shear, deputy US assistant secretary of state in charge of East Asian and Pacific affairs; and Deputy Defense Minister Chao Shih-chang (趙世璋) will deliver keynote speeches.
■ DIPLOMACY
MOFA to invite Lugo
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) will likely invite Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo to visit in the first half of next year, an official said yesterday. Lugo was unable to accept an invitation to visit this year because of his schedule, said Lin Cheng-hui (林正惠), deputy director-general of the MOFA’s Department of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs.
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