■HEALTH
Baby has enterovirus
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the youngest severe case of enterovirus this year — an eight-day-old boy — with the peak enterovirus season approaching. “The baby boy is the 10th severe case of enterovirus” of the year, CDC Deputy Director Lin Ting (林頂) said. The boy was born in a clinic at the end of last month and developed a fever after being taken home. He was rushed to a medical center, where he remains in critical condition. An investigation showed that the baby’s brothers, aged seven and three, were admitted to the same medical center early this month with mild enterovirus symptoms and discharged two days later. The CDC did not rule out the possibility of a community outbreak or of family members or friends passing the virus to the baby boy.
■ENERGY
Taipower installs new meters
To encourage more efficient use of energy, Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) said yesterday it was planning to install smart meters for 23,000 industrial customers and 10,000 residential customers by 2012. Taipower said it has budgeted NT$1.7 billion (US$52.5 million) to install the meters — which can identify power consumption in more detail and communicate that information back to the local power supplier — for its 23,000 industrial customers. Industrial high-voltage customers consumed about 58 percent of Taipower’s gross power generation, the company said. The first batch of residential customers to have smart meters will include 9,500 homes in the greater Taipei area and 500 in Penghu County, which the government hopes to transform into the country’s first low carbon county. If the program promotes energy efficiency, Taipower will install smart meters for 1 million customers between 2013 and 2015.
■ENTERTAINMENT
Kaohsiung opens theme park
A new theme park in Kaohsiung County that claims to be the nation’s largest is scheduled to begin a trial run on Saturday. The park, featuring themes from Greek mythology, has 47 entertainment facilities and is expected to attract more than 5 million visitors a year, said E-United Group, the owner of the E-Da theme park and outlet mall. “We hope to build E-Da World into Taiwan’s ‘Disneyland,’” said Lin Yi-shou (林義守), the founder of the group. Lin also expressed hope that the theme park’s mascots, conceived by prominent local designer Demos Chiang (蔣友柏), would become as popular as Japan’s Hello Kitty in the Chinese-speaking world. The theme park will be open from 9am to 9:30pm. Admission for adults during the trial period, running to the end of the year, is NT$800.
■TOURISM
Taiwan fourth most desirable
Taiwan ranks as the fourth most desirable destination in the Asia-Pacific region among people who plan to travel in the next six months, a recent MasterCard International survey showed. Hong Kong was the top choice for travelers, followed by Singapore, New Zealand and Taiwan, the biannual survey on travel trends in the Asia-Pacific region showed. The other destinations on the top 10 list were the Philippines, Australia, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan and China. The survey, which was conducted between March 15 and April 12, showed that most Taiwanese travelers prefer short regional tours, with 92 percent of them picking countries in the Asia-Pacific region as their most desirable destination.
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