■ Health
China travel alert issued
The Department of Health yesterday called for tourists traveling to China not to touch birds in order to avoid being infected with a bird flu. The warning came after Hong Kong confirmed a nine-year-old boy contracted the disease. The strain of the virus is similar to that which caused the bird-flu epidemic in Hong Kong in 1997. Center for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Chen Tsai-ching (陳再晉) noted yes-terday that there is no vaccine against bird flu. "The Council of Agriculture has not discovered any virus on the birds that can travel to humans," he said, noting that bird flu has never appeared in Taiwan. Nevertheless, Chen said the CDC may not be able to control the disease if an epidemic did occur locally. Chen also expressed concern that poultry smuggled in from China
may carry bird-flu virus.
■ Mass transit
Taipei officials go to Daegu
A group of Taipei City Government officials will go to Daegu, South Korea, to study events surrounding an arson attack on a subway train on Tuesday that has left at least 125 dead, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday. The Taipei City Government held an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss how to strengthen the safety of the city's mass rapid transit system, which transports around 1 million commuters daily. Although Taipei subway authorities said they were confident that their system is safe, participants at the meeting decided to organize a trip to Daegu to gain insight into how the tragedy happened and how a similar situation could be avoided or contained in Taipei. The delegation will leave today.
■ Drought
Nankan faces tougher steps
Nankan, the main island of the Matsu island group, might have to begin a second-phase of water rationing in the near future should its drought continue. Water levels in Nankan's reservoirs remain low despite recent slight precipitation. Water depart-ment statistics show the seven reservoirs and dams contain a total of 102,975 tonnes of water, 96,975 tonnes of which can be used to provide water for 39 days. The department said a second-phase of water restrictions might be put in place, giving residents one waterless day out of every five, if the water volume drops to less than 800,000 tonnes. The first phase of rationing, which stops water supplies every day after 9pm, has been in place since Feb. 6. The department warned resi-dents not to waste water before the annual rainy season arrives.
■ Crime
Motorcycle thefts targeted
The Ministry of the Interior plans to promote the identification-system for motorcycles by numbering motorcycle components in a bid to reduce bike thefts. The ministry yesterday invited criminal experts and academics to discuss how to decrease the rate of motorcycle theft, as part of Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien's (余政憲) aim to decrease the nation's crime rate over the next three months. Yu yesterday said that he believes an identification system would cut down on thefts. According to the Criminal Investigation Bureau, 191,280 motorcycles were stolen last year, a slight reduction from the 193,271 stolen in 2001. To implement the policy, Vice Minister Chein Tai-lang (簡太郎) will coordinate with the Ministry of Transportation and Communication in the coming weeks.
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