■ HEALTH
Wu reaffirms vaccine safety
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday encouraged people who were hesitant about obtaining the locally produced A(H1N1) vaccine to trust in its safety, adding that the government hoped the number of vaccinated would hit 30 percent of the population. Pediatricians at major medical institutions confirmed on Sunday that the number of schoolchildren receiving the vaccine had declined sharply over the past week, primarily amid concerns over the safety of the vaccine after a seven-year-old boy died days after being immunized. The father of the boy, a physician, claims the vaccine was behind his death. After preliminary discussions, however, experts have concluded that the death was unrelated to the vaccine. Saying the death of the boy was regrettable, Wu said he admired the child’s parents for nevertheless encouraging the public to get vaccinated.
■ TRANSPORTATION
Railway marks reopening
Residents of Taitung County will celebrate today the reopening of the Taiwan Railway South Link Line, which had been closed since being damaged by Typhoon Morakot in August. A musical feast mixed with an Aboriginal dance performance has been organized for the grand reopening ceremony at Taitung Railway Station, station director Kao Ming-kuang (高銘光) said yesterday. To mark the event, tickets for the first train to set off from the station and for an express train departing for Kaohsiung City at 12:52pm will be distributed free, Kao said. Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) will attend the ceremony, during which he will ring a bell to launch the first train. The 98.2km-long South Link Line runs across southern Taiwan, connecting Kaohsiung, Pingtung and Taitung counties.
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