■ POLITICS
KMT names personnel
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) announced its latest local branch personnel list ahead of the city mayor and county commissioner elections next year, Huang Chao-yuan (黃昭元), commissioner of the party’s Organization and Development Commission, said yesterday. While the arrangement was routine, it was also in part made to prepare for local elections next year, he said. Huang said the party could launch the nomination process for local government elections earlier than scheduled. “The party will probably begin the nomination process this December or January and hold primaries for local government head elections next April or May,” he said.
■ SOCIETY
Nangang celebrates flowers
Taipei City’s Nangang District (南港) celebrated the blossoming of sweet olive, or osmanthus, flowers with a carnival-like festival yesterday that featured musical performances and a fun fair. It was the sixth year that the Nangang District Office has held the Guihua Festival, which celebrates the blossoming of the sweet olive — a plant known for the fragrance of its flowers. The carnival began at Jiuzhuang Elementary School with a singing contest and a musical concert. Visitors to the one-day festival also had the opportunity to sample traditional guihua (桂花) cakes and guihua-scented Chinese tea. The Nangang District Office has been encouraging residents to plant more guihua trees as part of tourism promotion efforts. At present, there are 10,000 sweet olive trees in Nangang. District administrator Chiang Ching-hui (江慶輝) said that the trees began blossoming last week and that the fragrance was growing stronger as more flowers bloom.
■ INCOME
Kaohsiung earning more
Kaohsiung City’s annual household income averaged NT$1.18 million (US$36,200) last year, with average disposable income reaching NT$980,000, according to statistics released by the city government last week. Average family income was up 1.23 percent compared with the 2006 average of NT$1.17 million, the city government’s Department of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said. Of the average family income of NT$1.18 million, wages contributed an average NT$698,931, with the remainder coming from asset-related earnings. Last year’s average family discretionary income also saw a rise of 1.06 percent over the previous year’s level of NT$970,062, the tallies indicated. More than 90 percent of the city’s households had cellphones, while more than 70 percent had home computers, with 93 percent of those connected to the Internet, the survey of 1,500 households said.
■ FIRE SAFETY
Incident numbers decline
A total of 1,903 fire incidents were reported nationwide in the first eight months of the year, down 18 percent compared with the same period last year, according to Ministry of the Interior figures released yesterday. Building fires were the most common incidents, accounting for 66 percent of reports, the tally said. Thirty-six percent of the fires were attributed to short-circuiting electrical equipment, while 12 percent resulted from arson and 8 percent were caused by cigarette butts. By region, the highest rate was recorded in outlying Lienchiang County, with 6.1 incidents per 10,000 people. Taitung County had the second-highest rate with 4.7 incidents per 10,000 people, followed by Penghu County, with 3 incidents per 10,000 people.
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