Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday reiterated that travelers from Hong Kong and Macau, as well as Taiwanese returning home from the two areas, are to have their carry-on and check-in luggage fully checked at customs.
Su made the remarks on Facebook after a case of African swine fever was reported at a Hong Kong slaughterhouse on Friday.
Su said the government has since Jan. 16 been inspecting carry-on luggage of passengers arriving from China, Hong Kong and Macau, and has since purchased X-ray scanners, which are deployed at customs and ports nationwide.
Screen grab from Premier Su Tseng-chang’s Facebook page
He called on people to be on the lookout so that minced pork rice, a quintessential Taiwanese street food, would be protected.
Separately yesterday, Council of Agriculture Deputy Minister Huang Chin-cheng (黃金城) said that the case in Hong Kong could have been expected, given that the region imports most of its pork from China, and is near China’s Guangdong and Fujian provinces, which reported infection cases last year.
Quarantine measures are adequate and the council has no plans to implement additional measures, Huang said.
In related news, as the annual meeting of the World Organisation for Animal Health is to take place in Paris at the end of this month, the council’s Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said it has received an invitation and would send representatives to the meeting.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
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