TRAVEL
India announces change
Taiwanese will soon have an easier time traveling to India after the Dehli government announced on Saturday that it has included the Republic of China (ROC) in its tourist visa program. The holders of ROC passports and those from 35 other nations can use the new service beginning on Saturday, the Indian government said on its official Web site for the e-Tourist Visa Facility. That will bring the total number of countries covered by the program to 113 countries, and it is expected to be available to 150 countries by the end of the year, the government said. The program, launched on Nov. 27 last year, is designed to streamline visa application procedures and boost tourism. Seven more Indian airports will also be added to the list of designated airports permitting entry on an e-Tourist Visa, including those in Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Jaipur and Varanasi.
ANIMALS
Kaohsiung builds shelter
Construction of a new no-kill animal shelter in Kaohsiung for abandoned and stray animals is scheduled to be completed early next year in the Yanchao District (燕巢), the city’s animal protection office said. The shelter will cover 1 hectare and have the capacity to house 500 animals. The construction cost is estimated at about NT$100 million (US$3.15 million). Kaohsiung handles about 5,000 abandoned animals every year and existing facilities are unable to meet demand. The office said that about half of the animals taken in by shelters are adopted after being treated, adding that no more abandoned animals will be euthanized in Kaohsiung, which wants to become known as an animal-friendly city.
ELECTRICITY
Taipower forecasts shortage
Due to delays in the construction of the spent fuel dry storage facility for the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant, the nation might face a power supply shortage of 3 percent as soon as November next year, a Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) spokesman said. The Atomic Energy Council (AEC) on Friday approved Taipower’s application for the construction of dry storage facilities for spent fuel from the plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里). The project calls for the construction of 27 units of protection casks within the power plant site. Taipower said that since the construction project’s water conservation measures have not yet been approved by the Council of Agriculture, even though the project was passed by the AEC, it can only commission contractors to build the casks and cannot begin work on the plant grounds. Given the construction could take at least two years, Taipower has estimated the spent fuel problem could cause a reduction in nuclear power generation, thereby causing a power supply shortage.
RETAIL
Eslite Dunnan Store ‘cool’
The Eslite Dunnan Store in Taipei was recently listed on CNN’s list of the 17 “world’s coolest bookstores.” An article published on Tuesday on CNN’s Web site said that the bookstore had delighted the city in 1999 by staying open 24 hours a day. However, “the 17,000-square-meter store really made its name by stocking an impressive multi-language array of books and magazines,” the article said. Other stores on the CNN list were Shakespeare and Company in Paris; El Ateneo in Buenos Aires; Librairie Avant-Garde in Nanjing; Assouline Venezia in Venice; Livraria Lello in Porto, Portugal; and Boekhandel Dominicanen in Maastricht, the Netherlands.
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