■ Weather
Risk of typhoon this week
A low pressure system lurking near Guam could turn into a typhoon and perhaps affect Taiwan, the Central Weather Bureau reported yesterday. The low pressure system -- moving west-northwest towards the country at a speed of 20kph as of 11am -- could turn into a typhoon by today at the earliest, the bureau's meteorologists said. The nation is expected to come under the system's influence by around tomorrow or Thursday, they said.
■ Transportation
Ma mulls bike plan
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday in Berlin that he will study the viability of introducing a public bike transport system in Taipei similar to Berlin's. Ma made the remarks after learning about the German capital's city-bike and taxi-bike transport systems. In order to boost citizens' willingness to use public transport, the Berlin city government offers city-bikes for rent. With each bike controlled by an electronic lock, anyone interested in renting the bike can call a telephone line to open the key, and call to tell the location of the bike after they finish using it. The fee can be paid with credit cards.
■ Aviation
More birds hitting planes
Civilian planes in Taiwan were most likely to be hit by birds in the May-September period over the last three years, statistics released yesterday by the Civil Aeronautics Administration showed. The agency's statistics showed that between January 2001 and June 2004, there were 90 such incidents reported during the five-month period, accounting for 67.2 percent of the total reported at civilian airports.
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