TRANSPORTATION
Low-floor buses start routes
Fifty more low-floor buses began operating in Taipei yesterday as part of the city’s ongoing effort to make its transportation network more accessible. The new buses will bring the total number of low-floor buses in the city to 721, the city’s Public Transportation Office said on Sunday. They will run on routes running between Jingmei Girls High School and Taipei Main Station, Dongyuan and Donghu, Dongyuan and Minsheng Community, and Linguang Community and Taipei Veterans General Hospital, it said. The city began promoting low-floor buses in 2007 for elderly passengers and disabled persons. They incorporate barrier-free design elements such as low floors, ramps and extra space inside to accommodate wheelchairs, the office said.
CHARITY
Volunteers head to Nepal
A group of volunteers left for Nepal on Sunday to help build an environmentally friendly medical center, including Kung Shu-chang (龔書章), head of the Graduate Institute of Architecture at National Chiao Tung University, and Chien Chih-ming (簡志明), a young architect who has experience volunteering in remote areas of Taiwan. The team, organized by the Landseed International Medical Group (LIMG), will build a medical center over a 30-day period, using locally available materials. The LIMG said the project would include a solar energy generating system and composting toilets. The center will provide medical care and health education, and will be an environmentally friendly facility that meets the needs of local residents, it said.
CULTURE
Saxophonists blow for record
Hundreds of saxophonists blew their horns at a carnival in Greater Taichung on Sunday to set a new world record for simultaneous saxophone playing, in a town famed in the sax fraternity as the center of the world for their beloved instrument. A group of 1,432 sax players from around the nation teamed up to perform the national anthem and a popular Taiwanese folk song at the two-day Houli Instruments Carnival that opened on Saturday at the Houli Horse Farm, the Greater Taichung Government said. Among the musicians gathered to break the Guinness Book of World Records for the most saxophone players performing at once was pop singer Ricky Hsiao (蕭煌奇). Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) said he looks forward to seeing more than 10,000 musicians participating in similar events in the future. Houli District (后里) is known as “the home of the horn” thanks to its many, mostly family-owned instrument manufacturing businesses that provide instruments for some of the world’s biggest saxophone names.
SPORT
Impaired players take second
A team of visually impaired baseball players finished second in the National Beep Baseball Association (NBBA) World Series held in Indianapolis, Indiana, after losing to a team from California 11-10 in the championship game on Saturday. “Taiwan Homerun” played well defensively and at the plate, but still could not overcome the West Coast Dawgs in the World Series finale. Despite the loss against a team that entered the game undefeated since 2009, Wang Chen-kuang, the head of the Taiwan branch of the US-headquartered NBBA, said it was the best game the team had ever played. More than 50 Taiwanese expatriates and overseas officials were on hand to support the team.
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