HEALTH
Organ donors rising: poll
An increasing number of people in Taiwan are willing to donate their organs after death, a survey released yesterday by the Taiwan Organ Registry and Sharing Center showed. The poll said 69 percent of respondents have decided to be organ donors, an increase of 2 percent from three years ago. Of these respondents, more than 12 percent have signed a consent form for organ donation, which is equivalent to 320,000 people, up 43 percent from three years ago. The survey also found that younger people tend to identify more with the concept of organ donation, probably because they have more access to life education and information about organ donation, center deputy CEO Liu Chia-chi (劉嘉琪) said. The poll surveyed 5,022 people aged between 16 and 65 by telephone in May, and had a margin of error of 1.4 percentage points.
TRAVEL
Kaohsiung launches tour bus
A double-decker tour bus is to hit the road in Kaohsiung tomorrow, with one tour guide on board, as well as a portable audio tour guide service in English, Japanese and Korean, city officials said. The bus is to operate on a four-month trial basis on a 11km north-south route that will start and end at the square in front of Kaohsiung Dream Mall, the city government said. Traveling at 40kph, it will take passengers on a tour of attractions around the city, making no stops along the way, it added. As the back half of the upper level is open, the bus will carry 40 raincoats that passengers can use if necessary, it said. A one-day ticket for the 40-minute bus tour will cost NT$300 (US$9.52). The city government said it had ordered two double-decker tour buses for the new service, at a cost of NT$15 million each. The second bus is expected to be delivered in November, it 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