The Taipei City Government will install 11,500 surveillance cameras around the city by the end of the year to increase public safety measures, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said yesterday.
The city government has budgeted NT$160 million (US$5 million) to install the cameras. The system will be installed throughout 12 municipal districts and at major crime hotspots, including convenience stores, banks, jewelry shops and financial institutions.
“Surveillance cameras are great tools for preventing crime because they allow us to know robbers’ whereabouts when they reconnoiter the locations [of intended robberies],” Hau said at Taipei City Hall yesterday.
Hau said he was determined to implement his “zero tolerance for crime” policy and said the cameras would give the public a sense of security, in addition to discouraging criminal behavior.
The eagerness of the city government to install cameras came after recent robberies at the Taipei 101 Mall and at jewelry stores. The Taipei City Police Department said there were six major robberies in Taipei last year, of which three happened in jewelry stores.
Hau gave awards to police officers who solved the six major crimes and a mechanic who helped police stop a criminal in a jewelry store robbery last month. He also urged the public to work with the police to combat crime.
Lee Kuei-tang (李魁堂), who was passing by one of the jewelry stores when a robber rushed out, tripped the robber with a ladder. Police later caught two accomplices and solved the crime within a week.
Taipei City Police Commissioner Hsieh Hsiu-neng (謝秀能) said the department would also increase patrols at banks and jewelry shops to prevent crimes at such locations.
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