■ AGRICULTUR
Rain damage mounts
Pingtung County suffered the most among the four counties that bore the brunt of recent heavy downpours, Council of Agriculture officials said yesterday. Pingtung County suffered losses amounting to NT$14.59 million (US$480,900), followed by Miaoli County with NT$6.33 million, Tainan County with NT$1.37 million and Kaohsiung County with NT$1.08 million, the officials said. Overall agricultural produce losses on the 589 hectares of farmland affected by the heavy rains are estimated at NT$23.38 million. The main crops affected are watermelons, followed by muskmelons, oranges and eggplants.
■HEALTH
Flights readied after crash
Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) yesterday promised to launch cross-strait medical charter flights to return Taiwanese tourists who were injured in a bus accident in China’s Heilongjiang Province to Taiwan if necessary. During a question-and-answer session with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇), Lai said the council initiated an emergency communication channel between the Straits Exchange Foundation and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait right after the bus crash occurred on Monday morning. The accident took place at 8:30am when a bus carrying 28 Taiwanese tourists and their tour guide slammed into a farming vehicle coming in the opposite direction on a two-way road on the outskirts of Tongchiang. The crash claimed the life of 68-year-old retired teacher Chu Sung-tsuan (朱松川) from Sijih (汐止), Taipei County, while the tour guide and nine other tourists were injured. The injured, most of whom suffered fractured bones, were being treated in a hospital in Jiamusi, while the rest of the group were resting at a hotel in the city.
■ECONOMY
Ma backs stimulus plan
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday expressed support for the Cabinet’s proposed “stimulus package,” saying it would be more effective than a tax rebate in increasing domestic demand. Ma made the remarks when asked by reporters whether he would consider emulating South Korea, which recently announced tax rebates to alleviate the public’s financial burden brought about by rising oil and food prices. The Cabinet has proposed to budget NT$116 billion (US$3.8 billion) to expand domestic demand, saying it could contribute 0.42 percent to economic growth this year. The plan has been heavily criticized by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for the manner in which it proposes to distribute the funds, which the DPP said would result in misuse and exacerbate uneven regional development. Ma said he knew how it felt when a city or county did not have money to do what it wanted to do. The central government would ask local governments to use the funding wisely so that every dollar spent gets the best possible result, he said.
■DIPLOMACY
Kaohsiung AIT alters policy
The Kaohsiung branch office of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) yesterday announced a new appointment scheduling system for consular services. Except for renewals and the adding of pages to adult passports — which should be mailed to or dropped off at the consular section of the Kaohsiung branch office — applications for all other services will be accepted by appointment only, using a free online scheduling system, the office said in a statement yesterday. The new scheduling system will start on Monday.
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