■SOCIETY
Workers don’t want ‘zongzi’
Although zongzi, steamed rice dumplings, are traditionally associated with Dragon Boat Festival, office workers prefer not to receive them as holiday gifts, an online job bank survey showed yesterday. Zongzi are a boiled or steamed wraps made of glutinous rice and various fillings eaten around the time of the Dragon Boat Festival. According to 54 percent of the office workers polled by the 104 Job Bank, however, zongzi are at the bottom of the list of gifts they would prefer to receive during the festival. What they want most is cash or gift coupons for department stores or supermarkets, 76 percent of respondents said. Others said they would prefer office banquets, one-day tours or movie tickets, in that order.
■INDUSTRY
King Liu to cycle Netherlands
A group of 12 businessmen and officials from major cities around Taiwan, led by the president of Giant bicycle company, began a cycling tour of the Netherlands yesterday. On the six-day trip, dubbed “Green World on Wheels,” the group will ride a 500km route to look at the cycling infrastructure of the Netherlands, which is known as a “cycling paradise.” The riders will also study ways in which Taiwan can improve its cycling environment, said King Liu (劉金標), 76, who is president of Giant Manufacturing and chairman of the Giant Global group, the world’s largest bicycle manufacturer. The group is scheduled to cycle between 95km and 100km per day to see how and why 27 percent of all travel in the Netherlands is done by bicycle. Fifty other Taiwanese expatriates in the Netherlands have also joined the cycling tour, said Frank R.H. Liu (劉融和), Taiwan’s representative to the Netherlands.
■SOCIETY
COA looks into stray dogs
The Council of Agriculture has launched a nationwide investigation to measure local governments’ manpower and finances for handling stray dog , a council official said yesterday. Lin Tsung-yi (林宗毅), chief of the Animal Protection Section under the Department of Animal Industry, said that introducing professional and government-hired animal control officers has always been its goal. The council, however, still needs to evaluate the available manpower, budget and vehicles in each of the 25 local governments before taking the next step. It will take six months for the section to complete a fact-finding survey before making any suggestion to the legislature for an amendment to the Animal Protection Law requiring government officers in all 25 local governments, Lin said.
■TRANSPORTATION
Parking irks KMRT patrons
The latest approval survey of the Kaohsiung Mass Rapid Transit System (KMRT) released yesterday showed that the majority of patrons are not satisfied with the parking facilities outside KMRT stations. The survey, conducted by the National University of Kaohsiung on behalf of the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp (KRTC), questioned 704 passengers in March and found that 54.6 percent of respondents were unhappy with the KMRT’s parking facilities. Despite their complaints about the inconvenience of parking, 85.51 percent of passengers — a 2.51 percentage point increase from data released last year — said they were satisfied with the KRTC’s service in general. Nearly 77 percent of respondents were satisfied with access between KMRT stations and bus stops, sidewalks and bike facilities, the survey showed.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift