WEATHER
Cold front brings little rain
A cold front that has affected Taiwan since Tuesday has brought only small amounts of rain to northern, central and mountainous areas of the country and has failed to ease the drought, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday. The heaviest rainfall was recorded on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in central Taiwan, which had accumulated 21mm of rain as of early yesterday. The scarce rainfall has also affected irrigation in the south because the Tsengwen and Wushantou reservoirs, do not have enough water to irrigate second crops covering more than 40,000 hectares, according to the Chia-Nan Irrigation Association. Water Resource Agency officials added that if the Nanhua Reservoir, which provides water to Tainan area homes, falls to less than 18.1 million tonnes, first-phase water rationing will be imposed in the middle of this month.
SPORTS
Tseng to endorse Taishin
World No. 1 female golfer Yani Tseng (曾雅妮) is expected to sign a one-year US$500,000 endorsement deal with Taishin Financial Holdings Co on Sunday, which will boost her endorsement fees to a total of US$2 million this year. It will be the first endorsement deal for Tseng from a Taiwanese company. Late last month, Tseng inked a two-year sponsorship agreement with the Beijing-based Reignwood Group for a reported figure of between US$500,000 and US$600,000. With the Taishin deal, Tseng has six business sponsorships, but her earnings from such deals still lag behind those of Shin Ji-yai of South Korea, who will make about US$2.03 million this year.
AGRICULTURE
Alishan tea gets repackaged
The Chiayi County Government has unveiled new packaging and a computer application for high mountain tea grown in Alishan (阿里山) to help customers distinguish the brand from counterfeit products. High mountain tea accounts for 7.9 percent of the country’s total tea production and has been very popular with Chinese tourists, Chiayi County Commissioner Chang Hwa-kuan (張花冠) said. It is important to establish a recognition system and a unique brand to ensure its quality, she added. The tea, which will be selected from county-sanctioned contests, will be placed in a package that features a sea of clouds and cherry blossoms, both of which are famous views from the slopes of Alishan. The package will also have the logo “AmTc,” Chang said.
EDUCATION
NTU tops citation list
National Taiwan University (NTU) has outperformed other local universities this year in terms of thesis citations and number of theses published in the fields of physics, engineering, agriculture and medicine, according to statistics recently released by the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan. NTU has published 31,438 papers in Essential Science Indicators this year, ranking 54th in the world, the council said, adding the ranking was six notches higher than last year. Meanwhile, NTU papers have been cited 275,500 times this year, which put the university in 165th place worldwide, up 14 spots from the previous year. NTU was followed by National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), which rose four places from last year to 170th with 18,333 papers published this year. NCKU recorded 130,498 paper citations this year, ranking 362nd place in the world, up 19 places from a year earlier. The statistics, released annually, evaluate the quality and quantity of local academic papers.
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