■TRANSPORTATION
Kaohsiung offers new passes
Kaohsiung City Government and the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp (KRTC) are offering a monthly pass for unlimited MRT and bus rides. Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said the city government hopes to convince the 2.2 million scooter riders in Kaohsiung City and County to take advantage of the mass transportation system with the pass. The pass, which costs NT$1,250, will be available through the end of the year. The city government’s Transportation Bureau applied for NT$45 million (US$1.41 million) from the city’s Air Pollution Fund to subsidize the pass. The KRTC has launched a 100-day unlimited MRT pass, but not issued unlimited long-term passes for both the MRT and buses.
■AGRICULTURE
COA focuses on safety
The Council of Agriculture (COA) yesterday said it would continue promoting agricultural and food safety certification systems as part of efforts to ensure a healthy industry. The systems include an agricultural production and distribution traceability system — a mechanism to trace the origin of produce and another to regulate the planting and distribution of agricultural products, the council said in a statement yesterday. A system to certify vegetables and fruit as non-toxic — meaning they have safe levels of pesticides or that no pesticides were used while the products were being cultivated — will also continue to be part of the council’s safe agricultural products management measures, the statement said. Council officials said that joining the system would be voluntary because most farmers are elderly, and many are not good at record-keeping or digitizing their production process and results.
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