WEATHER
Rain to stop, mercury to rise
There is to be a brief respite from yesterday’s cool conditions today and tomorrow, before the mercury drops again on Thursday, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. The high temperature in northern Taiwan yesterday dropped by between three and four degrees from Sunday to between about 23oC and 24oC. Yesterday’s low temperature was close to that of Sunday at between 17oC and 19oC, resulting in wet and cool conditions overall, the bureau said. The bureau said that cold winter weather has been slow to arrive this year due to the El Nino phenomenon. Temperatures are to rebound today and tomorrow, with highs of 24oC in northern Taiwan and as high as 30oC in central and southern Taiwan. However, another cold air front is to arrive from Thursday to Saturday and drive temperatures down to 15oC or 16oC.
HEALTH
Dengue outbreak continues
The number of dengue fever cases reported in Taiwan increased to 39,084 since the start of May, with 272 new cases recorded on Sunday, according to data released by the Central Epidemic Command Center yesterday. As of Sunday, Kaohsiung alone reported 251 new cases, compared with 180 reported a day earlier, updated data showed. The number of cases in Kaohsiung reached 15,686, while the number in neighboring Tainan totaled 22,630. The epidemic has shown signs of abating in Tainan, the nation’s worst-hit area this year, with only 10 new cases reported on Saturday. Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said the epidemic remains at its peak in Kaohsiung, and he urged local residents to clean up potential vector breeding sites in the city’s 37 districts to contain the spread of the mosquito-borne disease.
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