■ HEALTH
Taichung City offers chickens
The Taichung City Government will start selling free-range chickens raised on organic feed on a trial basis from next month, Environmental Protection Department chief Lee Li-teh (李立德) said yesterday. Lee said the chickens would not contain any antibiotic residue or growth hormones and would be marketed over the Internet. The chickens are the result of a two-year experiment on a local farm, raising chickens on table scraps provided by Lee’s department. During the promotional period, each chicken will cost NT$450 and only 50 chickens will be sold per month, Lee said during a news conference with the Taichung City Farmers Association. The chickens take more than six months to raise in order to ensure their meat is tasty, he said.
■ DIPLOMACY
ICDF looking for volunteers
The Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF) is seeking 90 volunteers to take part in humanitarian missions to the nation’s diplomatic allies. Over the past 14 years, ICDF has sent more than 400 volunteers on long-term and short-term medical, agriculture, financial and environmental projects. Volunteers must be at least 20 years old, a Republic of China citizen, have a college degree or five years’ work experience in a related field. English-speaking ability is preferred. Volunteers will receive three months of training, a roundtrip ticket and a monthly stipend between US$400 and US$700, depending on their posting. Applications are being accepted until Monday.
■ POLITICS
Officials seek special status
Tainan County Commissioner Su Huan-chih (蘇煥智), Tainan Mayor Hsu Tain-tsair (?]) and other Tainan politicians called on the Executive Yuan yesterday to merge the city and county and upgrade them to a special municipality. They talked to Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) yesterday, but did not receive a commitment. Liu said the government would approve applications of county and city mergers in accordance with the Local Government Act (地方制度法). Hsu said the government’s plan to establish three special municipalities — Taipei City, Kaohsiung City and Taichung County/City — and 15 counties would hurt Tainan County and Tainan City. “Tainan County and Tainan City have been marginalized in the past,” he said. “Kaohsiung developed fast because of Kaohsiung Harbor, and Taichung’s growth was a result of the [former] provincial government. Tainan, however, has been oppressed by politics.” Su said upgrading the status of Tainan County and City would facilitate unity in the country because “they are the origins of the country’s culture and history.”
■ POLITICS
Kang takes office
Newly elected Independent Legislator Kang Shih-ju (康世儒) assumed office yesterday and joined the Non-Partisan Solidarity Union (NPSU) caucus. Caucus whip Lin Pin-kuan (林炳坤) said the NPSU would continue to oppose wrangling between the pan-blue and pan-green camps. Kang was elected in a March 14 by-election in Miaoli after he beat Chen Luan-ying (陳鑾英), wife of former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Lee Yi-ting (李乙廷). Kang, chief of Chunan Township (竹南), gave up his KMT membership to run in the by-election. Lee, who was elected as a first-term lawmaker in January last year, lost his seat on Dec. 10 after the Taichung branch of the High Court rejected his appeal of a Miaoli District Court conviction on vote buying.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
Environmental groups yesterday filed an appeal with the Executive Yuan, seeking to revoke the environmental impact assessment (EIA) conditionally approved in February for the Hsieh-ho Power Plant’s planned fourth liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving station off the coast of Keelung. The appeal was filed jointly by the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group, the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association and the Keelung City Taiwan Head Cultural Association, which together held a news conference outside the Executive Yuan in Taipei. Explaining the reasons for the appeal, Wang Hsing-chih (王醒之) of the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group said that the EIA failed to address
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
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