SOCIETY
Anti-poverty rally held
More than 500 people took part in a rally against poverty yesterday, which was World Food Day, to call for less waste and for people to do more to help the needy. The rally, held by the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families (TFCF) a day before the UN’s International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, was part of an annual worldwide campaign coordinated by the UN to call attention to poverty. Last year, Taiwan wasted more than 2.75 million tonnes of food, enough to feed disadvantaged families for 20 years, TFCF executive director Wang Ming-jen (王明仁) said, citing statistics from the Environmental Protection Administration. Moreover, the amount of kitchen waste in Taiwan last year averaged 121kg per person, 10 percent more than in the US and European countries, a fund press release said.
SOCIETY
Monkey burned by cable
A wild monkey that got into a high speed rail station in Greater Kaohsiung yesterday morning suffered burns from an electric shock as it tried to escape, the Kaohsiung City Fire Bureau said. The monkey, identified as a member of the protected species known as the Formosan Rock Macaque, evaded the firemen and staff from the city’s Agriculture Bureau trying to catch it. The Fire Bureau responded to a call at about 10am that a monkey was in Tsuoying Station and could pose a threat to operations. They initially tried to lure the macaque with food, but to no avail. They then shot it with an anesthetic dart, but that failed to work and the monkey continued to run around until it touched a high-voltage cable.
SOCIETY
Girl enjoys first pizza
A girl surnamed Chang thanked social workers from the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families yesterday for making her dream of eating pizza for the first time come true. “So this is how good pizza tastes. I am so happy to be eating my dream food,” said the six-year-old girl, who attends an elementary school in Tianliao District, Greater Kaohsiung. TFCF Kaohsiung said it is currently helping 4,200 students from 2,200 families. With prices rising, people at the bottom of the social ladder need more help from society, the fund said. Chang and her brother live with their grandparents, who support the family by selling vegetables they grow in their own garden. When the social workers delivered slices of hot pizza and bowls of beef noodles to the family, the children’s eyes lit up, the fund said.
SCIENCE
Egg white used as insulator
A research team from National Cheng Kung University received an Outstanding Student Research Award for work proving that egg white is not only a source of protein, but also a potential electric insulator. The team was not one of the top three recipients of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Outstanding Student Research Award, but did receive a special creativity award for its original work. The research was initiated by electro--optical engineering professor Guo Tzung-fang (郭宗枋) and conducted by doctoral student Chang Che-wei (張哲維). Guo said the idea came to him while he was frying an egg for breakfast in the US a few months ago. Guo said he called Chang in Taiwan and asked him to start the experiment. Chang said that at first he thought the idea was “crazy.” The experiment took a month-and-a-half and concluded with the team proving that egg white could work as an insulator in a transistor, Chang said.
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