WEATHER
Cold front to hit Taiwan
The mercury is expected to drop nationwide from today as a cold front accompanied by seasonal winds is to pass over Taiwan, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. The air movement may bring a cool and wet weather pattern across the nation with the effects most likely to be felt in the northern and northeastern regions, it said. The trend might continue for a week, the bureau said, with daily temperatures forecast to range between 22°C and 30°C in northern Taiwan, between 24°C and 31°C in central Taiwan, and between 25°C and 31°C in southern Taiwan. Meanwhile, more rain is expected starting next Friday caused by the outer rim of an approaching tropical storm, the bureau said. As of 8am yesterday, Tropical Strom Jelawat was centered 1,470km southeast of the southernmost tip of Taiwan, moving slowly in a westerly direction.
SOCIETY
Poverty levels increase
There were 137,000 low-income households in the country as of the end of June, an increase of 20.2 percent from the same period last year, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The number of low-income individuals for the same period stood at 338,000 people, up 22.4 percent, and increased to 1.5 percent of the total population as a result of the easing of regulations governing public assistance introduced last year, the ministry said. The implementation of an amendment to the Social Assistance Act (社會救助法) in July last year allowed 71,000 households or 228,000 individuals, considered to be “lower middle income” earners to receive government subsidies as of this June. Currently, 2.6 percent of families in Taiwan and 2.4 percent of the total population are receiving help from the government, the ministry said.
EDUCATION
Global role for academics
Five members of Academia Sinica, the nation’s top academic research institute, have been elected to the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS), headquartered in Italy, the institute said in a statement on Friday. Chang Tzu-ching (張慈錦), an assistant research fellow at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, was elected a 2012 TWAS Young Affiliate — an honor awarded annually to exceptional scientists aged under 40. The five academicians elected as TWAS fellows were Wang Kuan (王寬), director of the Academia Sinica’s Institute of Chemistry; Wang Lu-hai (王陸海), acting president and distinguished investigator of the National Health Research Institutes’ Division of Molecular and Genomic Medicine; Liang Kung-yee (梁賡義), president of National Yang-Ming University; Chu Shih-i (朱時宜), director of the Kansas Center for Advanced Scientific Computing and Hu Chenming (胡正明), a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California at Berkeley.
AVIATION
Airline looks for new recruits
Over 4,000 people were interviewed yesterday in the first stage of a selection process to hire 126 flight attendants for China Airlines (CAL), the nation’s largest carrier. CAL’s recruitment drive, its second this year, is being conducted in two stages as part of its business expansion plan. The airline said it hopes to find flight attendants with excellent communication skills. An independent panel of representatives from the government, academic and industrial sectors would be interviewing more than 4,000 applicants over the weekend, CAL 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