■TRAVEL
Pet food not for import
Quarantine authorities yesterday advised people against bringing pet food to Taiwan from abroad because some of the products may include ingredients that are barred from entering the country. The Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine (BAPHIQ) made the announcement after inspectors from the Consumer Production Commission and the Taipei County Government found pet food at a pet store in the county containing US beef and offal. An investigation found the store owner was smuggling the products from the US into Taiwan for sale, a BAPHIQ official said.
■TRAVEL
Free Thailand visas end
Thailand resumed a policy of charging NT$1,100 for tourist visas yesterday after its visa-free policy, in place over the past year as part of its tourism stimulus measures, expired a day earlier. Officials at the Tourism Authority of Thailand’s Taipei office said they could not comment on the possibility that the free visa policy would be extended into next year, because they had not received any official instructions on the matter. The Thai government has agreed to extend the tourism stimulus measures from April 1 to March 31 next year, but before the extension takes effect, Taiwanese will still have to pay for a visa to visit the country. The Tourism Authority said details related to the measures, proposed by the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, still needed to be discussed with the Thai foreign ministry and immigration bureau before they are implemented by the government. In addition to the visa fee exemption for foreign tourists, visitors will be granted US$10,000 in riot insurance covering any harm or delays they face while in Thailand because of political demonstrations or riots.
■CRIME
MOJ plans female jail
The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) yesterday said it would establish the nation’s first women’s detention center in July in line with its policy of protecting women’s rights. Minister of Justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) told a press conference that the detention center, to be built in Shilin (士林), Taipei City, would house female detainees from Taipei, Keelung and Taoyuan. The ministry has tried to improve prison and detention center facilities amid criticism that they are overcrowded. Wang said the ministry plans to build more detention centers and prisons for female detainees and inmates to safeguard women’s rights. Starting in January, all prisons and detention centers must add hot shower time for female detainees and prisoners and arrange for doctors to conduct periodical cervical screening tests, Wang said. She added that the ministry was adding female members to its parole review committee.
■TRANSPORTATION
Ships collide near Kinmen
A Taiwanese naval supply vessel collided with a Chinese freighter in thick fog near Kinmen on Thursday, Navy Fleet Command said that day. The supply ship Chung Pang, part of the Navy’s 151st Fleet, was on a routine mission when it was involved in a glancing collision with the Shunlong No. 6 5 nautical miles (9.3km) off Kinmen’s Liaoluo Port, the fleet command said. The Chung Pang was on its way from Taiwan to Kinmen, while the Chinese boat was heading south to Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, from Zejiang when the incident took place. The Coast Guard Administration was investigating the cause of the collision.
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,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read: