SPORTS
Flash Wolves win ‘LoL’
Taiwanese eSports team Flash Wolves yesterday beat European team G2 eSports in Katowice, Poland, to win the League of Legends ( LoL) event, which is part of the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) World Championship. The championship, a series of international esports tournaments in which teams from around the world compete, involved three games this year: LoL, StarCraft II and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Flash Wolves represented the Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau region in the LoL event. LoL is a popular multiplayer online game played by 27 million people every day, developer Riot Games said. After winning the game, Flash Wolves posted a photograph of the team holding up the trophy on their Facebook page with the caption: “Thank you to everyone who has supported us on this long journey. We did it.”
FOOD
Ichiran Ramen coming
Ichiran Ramen, one of the leading noodle restaurant chains in Japan, is scheduled to open its first eatery in the nation in June, according its Facebook page. The first Taiwanese branch is to open on Songren Road in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義), which already hosts a cluster of other Japanese ramen restaurants, including Kagetsu Ramen and Ippudo Ramen. Ichiran Ramen said it would offer its Taiwanese customers exactly the same flavor and experience as at its establishments in Japan. Established in Fukuoka in 1960, Ichiran Ramen is a favorite among Taiwanese visitors to Japan and is famous for its Tonkotsu broth, which is pork flavored.
AGRICULTURE
Tainan farm falls to avian flu
A chicken farm in Tainan’s Houbi District (後壁) on Sunday was confirmed to have been infected with the highly pathogenic avian flu virus H5N2 and 24,586 chickens were culled, the city’s Animal Health and Protection Office said. The owner on Thursday reported abnormal deaths of chickens at the farm, and investigation and testing found that some of the 11-week-old chickens were infected with the virus. Another 14,222 chickens on three Yunlin County farms, 5,098 ducks at a Hualien County farm and 498 turkeys at a Chiayi County farm were also culled on Sunday to contain H5N2 infections. Meanwhile, no new cases of a more virulent H5N6 strain of the virus, which could be transmitted to humans, were reported on Sunday, as the number of infected farms remained at 11 where 26,000 birds were culled, the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said. These farms were mostly in Tainan and Yunlin and Chiayi counties, the bureau said.
LABOR
Changing ‘runaway’ rules
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wu Yu-chin (吳玉琴) yesterday said she would propose amending the Employment Service Act (就業服務法) to require employers to provide evidence before accusing their foreign workers of running away. Article 56 of the act states that if a foreign worker is absent from work for three consecutive days and does not contact their employer, the employer must notify local authorities, immigration officials and the police in writing within three days. Wu said the proposal was in response to recent cases of foreign workers reported to have absconded from their jobs when they had simply failed to contact their employer because they were injured at work or were mistreated. Wu said she would propose that employers who falsely report that their workers have run away could face a fine ranging from NT$60,000 to NT$300,000.
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