WEATHER
No threat from full moon
Today’s full moon, which will appear larger than normal due to its closeness to Earth, will not pose any threat, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said yesterday amid speculations that the “supermoon” might cause natural disasters. “There is no scientific link between a lunar effect and natural disasters,” said a museum researcher surnamed Lee (李). In March last year, many people expressed concern that a “supermoon” could be related to natural disasters because one was visible on March 20, shortly after a massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan. Today’s full moon will be 356,955km from Earth, making it closer to our planet than at any other time this year and appear at least 14 percent bigger than usual, Lee said. The moon will be at its closest to Earth and in its fullest phase at 11:35pm.
NATIONAL DEFENSE
Suicide rate below average
The incidence of people in the military taking their own lifes is lower than that of the average population, the Ministry of National Defense said. The ministry was responding to reports that more than 300 service personnel have died from self-inflicted wounds over the past decade and more than 100 have taken their own lives over the past five years. The ministry said in a statement that there were 243 deaths from self-inflicted wounds among servicemembers between 2002 and last year. It also noted that the incidence of self-inflicted fatalities among military personnel was 7.1 out of every 100,000 last year, lower than the figure of between 16.8 and 19.3 per 100,000 for the general population between 2006 and 2010, according to Department of Health statistics. The ministry’s comments come after a military police conscript killed himself with his service rifle while standing guard at the Presidential Office on Thursday.
SOCIETY
Chinese biker dies
An elderly Chinese tourist on a cycling tour of Kinmen died on Friday night after being hit by a small truck earlier in the day. The Kinmen County Police Bureau said the accident occurred when a truck driven by a resident surnamed Lee (李) was heading west from the airport in the slow lane. When Lee tried to pass a car straddling the fast and slow lanes to its right, he hit Wu Shihe (吳世河), who was walking his bike on the side of the road, police said. Wu, 75, was knocked unconscious and was rushed to Kinmen Hospital, where he was pronounced dead just after 7pm. Wu arrived in Kinmen on Thursday with 15 other members of a cycling club in Quanzhou, China. They were scheduled to return home yesterday. The police have questioned Lee and the driver of the car he passed, surnamed Hsiao (蕭), to determine who was responsible for Wu’s death.
POLITICS
Fake ad sparks discussion
A classified ad placed in a local newspaper on Friday that poked fun at the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration was widely shared by netizens and sparked discussion on the Internet. The “president wanted” ad said the qualified applicant had to be able to finish a 3,000m run, do more than 67 pushups and do the occasional tour or TV show. No educational or other qualifications were listed, but it did say the applicant should not have a Taiwanese accent and needed to be more than 1.75m tall and fit. The contact number given was 0944-414-414, equivalent to the Chinese characters Nin jiou shi shi, shi yi shi, shi yi shih (您就試試,試一試,試一試), which means “Come try, try it out, try it out.”
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