Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) suggested yesterday that the government impose fines of up to NT$30 million (US$911,854) on makers of counterfeit municipal garbage bags, saying that imposing heavy fines is the only effective way of stopping the practice.
According to Ma, Taipei City has decided to crack down on after recent spate of plastic garbage bag forgery cases.
Some of the fake garbage bags look so similar to ones made under the city government's authority that officials from the Taipei Bureau of Environmental Protection could not tell the difference between the fakes and the genuine bags at a press conference held Friday.
Speaking at another press conference yesterday, Ma said the city government has drafted a proposal that would raise fines for garbage bag forgery from the current range of NT$30,000-NT$100,000 to NT$300,000-NT$30 million and impose jail terms of 3-7 years on counterfeiters. He said the strict measures are intended to deter the illegal practice once and for all.
According to Ma, the Cabinet-level Environmental Protection Administration (環保署) has agreed to support a legislative amendment to related waste management and cleaning statutes so as to legitimize the heavy penalties for garbage bag counterfeiting.
Taipei is the first and so far the only city in Taiwan to adopt a garbage fee collection system, in which residents have to purchase the city government's official bags, the price of which includes a disposal fee.
Since Taipei's garbage collection system was implemented last July, the city's average daily garbage volume per person has dropped to 1.1kg, compared to about 3.3kg before.
The garbage fee collection system, which earns the city about NT$1.2 billion a month, has also attracted makers and suppliers of counterfeit garbage bags. According to Taipei City police headquarters, they received information on 56 cases of bag counterfeiting over the last several months and have cracked 14 of them.
MISINFORMATION: The generated content tends to adopt China’s official stance, such as ‘Taiwan is currently governed by the Chinese central government,’ the NSB said Five China-developed artificial intelligence (AI) language models exhibit cybersecurity risks and content biases, an inspection conducted by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The five AI tools are: DeepSeek, Doubao (豆包), Yiyan (文心一言), Tongyi (通義千問) and Yuanbao (騰訊元寶), the bureau said, advising people to remain vigilant to protect personal data privacy and corporate business secrets. The NSB said it, in accordance with the National Intelligence Services Act (國家情報工作法), has reviewed international cybersecurity reports and intelligence, and coordinated with the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau and the National Police Agency’s Criminal Investigation Bureau to conduct an inspection of China-made AI language
LIMITS: While China increases military pressure on Taiwan and expands its use of cognitive warfare, it is unwilling to target tech supply chains, the report said US and Taiwan military officials have warned that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could implement a blockade within “a matter of hours” and need only “minimal conversion time” prior to an attack on Taiwan, a report released on Tuesday by the US Senate’s China Economic and Security Review Commission said. “While there is no indication that China is planning an imminent attack, the United States and its allies and partners can no longer assume that a Taiwan contingency is a distant possibility for which they would have ample time to prepare,” it said. The commission made the comments in its annual
‘TROUBLEMAKER’: Most countries believe that it is China — rather than Taiwan — that is undermining regional peace and stability with its coercive tactics, the president said China should restrain itself and refrain from being a troublemaker that sabotages peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday. Lai made the remarks after China Coast Guard vessels sailed into disputed waters off the Senkaku Islands — known as the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) in Taiwan — following a remark Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made regarding Taiwan. Takaichi during a parliamentary session on Nov. 7 said that a “Taiwan contingency” involving a Chinese naval blockade could qualify as a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, and trigger Tokyo’s deployment of its military for defense. Asked about the escalating tensions
DISPUTE: A Chinese official prompted a formal protest from Tokyo by saying that ‘the dirty head that sticks itself out must be cut off,’ after Takaichi’s Taiwan remarks Four armed China Coast Guard vessels yesterday morning sailed through disputed waters controlled by Japan, amid a diplomatic spat following Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments on Taiwan. The four ships sailed around the Senkaku Islands — known as the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) to Taiwan, and which Taiwan and China also claim — on Saturday before entering Japanese waters yesterday and left, the Japan Coast Guard said. The China Coast Guard said in a statement that it carried out a “rights enforcement patrol” through the waters and that it was a lawful operation. As of the end of last month,
RSS