ENVIRONMENT
Tree removals spark protests
Environmentalists yesterday staged a protest outside the National Police Agency to protest the illegal removal of dozens of decades-old trees from parks in New Taipei City (新北市) to make room for the construction of police stations, as well as the prosecution of an environmentalist, who protested against the removals last month. Although then-Taipei County commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) and then-Taipei County Police Department chief Liu Kuo-tung (林國棟) admitted at a county council meeting last year that the proper legal requirements were not completed before the removal of the trees and apologized, the police still removed a total of 48 trees to make room for six police stations. Responding to the protesters, police agency official Lu Hsin-tsai (呂新財) yesterday promised that the agency would act more cautiously in the future.
POLITICS
Government hands out funds
The central government disbursed a total of NT$71.8 billion (US$2.47 billion) in cash to local governments on Thursday so they could pay salaries, year-end bonuses, job performance awards and retirement pensions, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said. The move came after Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) asked the DGBAS to deliver “the most basic fairness and justice” to government officials at all levels as the nation prepares to welcome the Year of the Rabbit on Feb. 3. The DGBAS said that of the total, NT$68 billion was for regular budgets allocated to local governments for this month and next month, while NT$3.8 billion was the government’s reserve funds.
AGRICULTURE
China open to CAS products
Quality agricultural and farm products with CAS certificates will now be allowed into the Chinese market because the label has been registered in Taiwan, according to a Council of Agriculture official. “Taiwanese CAS-certified food products will gain an advantage in the vast Chinese market now that approval has been obtained for sales in China,” the council’s Animal Industry Department Director Hsu Kuei-sen (許桂森) said. “Efforts will be made to expand the sales network for CAS products from Shanghai to other Chinese cities, in collaboration with local importers and distributors.” Chue Weihsiung (崔軼雄), president of a Cityshop supermarket outlet in Shanghai, said the CAS label would help increase sales of Taiwanese meat products by 25 percent at his chain stores.
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