RESOURCES
Power supplies running low
Taiwan electricity reserves fell to their lowest level of the year on Monday afternoon, state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) said, urging the public to conserve energy. The percentage of operating reserves fell to 3.44 percent of the peak load at 1:44pm on Monday, the lowest level so far this year, when the country’s power usage hit 34.2 gigawatts, Taipower said. Any operating reserve margin below 6 percent represents a greater chance of power rationing being introduced, the company said. The tight power supplies have been caused mainly by the suspension of the company’s natural gas thermal power plant in Greater Kaohsiung because of the partial closure of gas pipelines in the city following lethal gas explosions there on July 31 and Aug. 1, Taipower said. The suspension, along with shutdowns of generators at other power plants for routine maintenance, reduced the total power supply by 3.13 gigawatts, the company said.
WEATHER
Record highs assault nation
The mercury in Taipei soared to 37.8?C at 1:15pm yesterday, a record high for this year. The Central Weather Bureau said Keelung and New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋) both saw highs of 36.8?C at about noon. Yilan County, Greater Taichung, Greater Kaohsiung and Penghu and Kinmen counties saw highs of more than 34?C, the bureau added. Greater Kaohsiung reached 37.6?C, a record high since the southern city started keeping weather data 82 years ago, the bureau said, adding that the high temperatures resulted from the periphery of Typhoon Kalmaegi bringing warm and dry easterly winds from the Pacific. Kalmaegi was heading west toward northern Vietnam and China’s Guangxi Province as of yesterday afternoon.
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