■ Politics
TSU head shortens US trip
Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Chairman Su Chin-chiang (蘇進強) is scheduled to depart for the US on Saturday for a six-day visit. Liu Chia-sheng (劉嘉生), director of the TSU's administrative department, said that Su originally wanted to visit the US for 10 days but decided to shorten the trip to six days so that he could take part in the nomination of the party's candidates for the year-end city and county-chief elections. Liu said that Su's trip has been arranged by the TSU's supporters on the US West Coast. Su will mainly stay in Los Angeles, where he will preside over the inauguration of the TSU's West Coast and East Coast chapters in the US. The party's supporters in New York will travel to Los Angeles for the inauguration ceremony. Su will also visit the Los Angeles City government and meet local politicians before returning to Taiwan on July 21.
■ Environment
EPA tackles overpackaging
In line with a government policy to reduce overpackaging, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) has initiated a nationwide tour to promote eco-friendly concepts, an EPA spokesman said yesterday. The EPA will hold 20 seminars in cities and counties around Taiwan and on Penghu and Kinmen through Aug. 20 to help businesses get ready in time for the implementation of the policy by providing them with a detailed explanation of the new moves, the spokesman said. The first phase of the policy is slated to be put into place in July next year and will require businesses, including bakeries and manufacturers of cosmetics and liquor, to refrain from overpackaging their products, he said.
■ Agriculture
`Authentic' local rice touted
The first batch of "authentic" Taiwanese rice certified by the Food and Agriculture Administration under the Council of Agriculture through DNA testing will hit the market soon and officials yesterday called for consumer support for the product. In a bid to provide consumers with high-quality local rice amid fierce foreign competition after Taiwan entered the WTO in 2002, the administration will sponsor a series of activities to promote 36 brands of locally planted rice labeled with a "CAS" certificate at major distribution centers and shops across Taiwan through Oct. 31, administration officials said. The aim of the promotion is in part to encourage the rice industry to honestly display the species, quality and the production site of their merchandise, and in part to help build consumer confidence in domestic rice, the officials said.
■ Health
Oranges, sex link questioned
Department of Health (DOH) officials yesterday expressed concern about claims made by two medical practitioners that green oranges grown in Taiwan could be used to treat obesity, baldness and sexual dysfunction. Chen Lu-hung (陳陸宏), director-general of the Bureau of Food Safety, acknowledged that oranges are a good fruit but said that it was inappropriate to declare that eating the rind of green oranges can help people lose weight because such a claim would mislead consumers. Chen said promoters of any food item are prohibited by law from declaring that their product is effective in treating certain diseases. He said he will contact the Council of Agriculture (COA) to investigate the case, since it was the COA that sponsored the presentation promoting green oranges.
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