■ TRANSPORT
A million ride new MRT
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) announced yesterday that more than 1 million passengers had taken free rides on the city's mass rapid transit system and 90 percent of the passengers had been satisfied with their trips. Since the Kaohsiung MRT's Red Line opened last Sunday, nearly 200,000 passengers have used the system each day, with the total for the week hitting 1 million yesterday morning. Chen said the numbers demonstrated the long-term aspirations for the system Kaohsiung residents have. Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp is allowing passengers to ride the new north-south Red Line for free during a one-month trial period that ends on April 6.
■ SCIENCE
Research teams lauded
Researchers at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology have made significant achievements in breeding and food technology recently, and hope the discoveries can help boost local industries. The school said its research team recently discovered a way to increase the growth rate of oysters by as much as 1cm to 2cm a month. The researchers said the waters around Pingtung made it an ideal place for oyster breeding and they hoped the team's achievement would help expand the local oyster industry. Another research team has scored several major successes in food technology research, including developing a highly nutritious seaweed grain as well as a cobia-based soya sauce, the latter developed in cooperation with a local breeding company, the school said. The university's president expressed hope that the researchers' achievements would help spur the development of related industries in the outlying island county.
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