TRANSPORT
New bike rules to take effect
From July 17, cyclists in Taipei are to be fined NT$300 if they ride on sidewalks outside of established bike lanes, the Taipei City Government said on Friday. Riders would be required to stick to designated bike lanes and if such a lane does not exist, they would have to ride in the slow lanes of city streets, city officials said. The regulations are to first be enforced in areas that have well-defined bike lanes, such as on Xinyi, Renai, Roosevelt and Xinsheng South roads, officials said. The Taipei Department of Transportation had originally planned to put the regulations into practice yesterday. However, it decided to delay the launch by two weeks after Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said he was unaware of the new rules and asked transportation officials to step up publicity of them.
SOCIETY
Conscript number dips
The government plans to conscript 138,975 military personnel this year, a decrease of 29,144 people from last year and the lowest annual number in the past decade, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The low number is partly a result of superstition, as on the Chinese zodiac, 1998 — the birth year of the conscripts — was a Year of the Tiger, so the birth rate was low, the ministry said. It is believed that people born in the Year of the Tiger have bad luck. The number of conscripts per year over the past 10 years has often reached 165,000, with 2009 seeing a high of 174,000, the ministry said. Among those conscripted this year, 89.4 percent would not be able to fulfill their duty in the year, ministry data show. The ministry said 85.9 percent of that group remain in school and 9.8 percent have already served their terms — for example as military-school students.
WEATHER
Mercury soars in Taipei
The mercury hit 35.9°C in Taipei at 12:10pm yesterday, the highest temperature recorded in the capital this year, the Central Weather Bureau said. As of about 2pm yesterday, the highest temperature across the nation occurred in Chiayi, where the temperature climbed to 36°C at 1:16pm, the bureau said. The highest temperature in northern Taiwan was the 35.9°C recorded in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋), although a high of 36.2°C was recorded there on Wednesday, it said. The bureau reminded the public to take precautions against sunburn and to stay hydrated to avert heat stroke.
SOCIETY
FDA flip-flops on fluopyram
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday revoked its decision to tolerate traces of fluopyram in tea, after its previous decision to permit residue of the fungicide stirred controversy. In line with the Council of Agriculture policy of allowing the use of a pesticide that is a mixture of fluopyram and trifloxystrobin on tea bushes, the FDA on March 15 announced that up to 6 parts per million of fluopyram residue would be permitted. The announcement immediately triggered a public outcry because fluopyram has been linked to thyroid and liver cancer in mice. According to FDA Food Safety Division director Pan Chih-kuan (潘志寬), the decision to revoke the tolerance was made to ease consumer concerns and avoid unnecessary misunderstanding. The FDA and council would reconsider the use of fluopyram and its residue limit and would improve communication with the public before a further decision is made, he said.
Staff writer, with CNA
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