ASTRONOMY
Jupiter brightening
Stargazers on Tuesday are to have a chance to see Jupiter at its brightest, when it moves closest to Earth, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said. The opposition of Jupiter, which occurs when Earth comes between the sun and the largest planet in the solar system, would offer the best view of Jupiter this year, and observation conditions should be ideal days before and after the opposition, the museum said. Jupiter is easy to locate, as it rises at dusk from the southeast and descends at dawn to the southwest, it said. During the event, Jupiter could brighten to a magnitude of minus-2.8, which is about the brightness of a new moon, it said. The magnitude scale measures the brightness of a celestial body as seen from Earth and its value falls as an object becomes brighter.
AGRICULTURE
Pork exports resume
Taiwanese pork on Friday arrived in Macau for the first time in 24 years after the nation was declared a foot-and-mouth disease (FMD)-free zone where vaccination is not practiced, the Council of Agriculture (COA) said. The 550kg shipment, delivered on a StarLux Airlines flight, was a trial batch consisting mainly of refrigerated pork and frozen meat, COA Deputy Minister Huang Chin-cheng (黃金城) said. Casino operators in Macau have placed orders with COA-partnered Taiwanese hog farmers for the refrigerated meat of about 200 pigs per week, Huang said. The shipment to Macau came just weeks after the World Organization for Animal Health last month declared Taiwan, including the outlying counties of Penghu and Lienchiang, an FMD-free zone.
TRANSPORT
No injuries in derailment
The derailment of a Tzuchiang Limited Express train on Friday evening caused delays for 20,234 passengers, the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) said yesterday. No one was injured. Normal service resumed yesterday morning. Northbound Train No. 140, which was to travel from Changhua County to Keelung, was not carrying any passengers when it derailed at 6:10pm at Changhua Station, as it was about to be dispatched, the TRA said. The derailment damaged some of the tracks, and as a result all TRA trains in both directions were forced to travel on one track, delaying 59 trains for a combined 2,921 minutes, it said. The TRA said it fixed the problem overnight, and all services returned to normal at 4:30am yesterday. The cause of the incident is under investigation, it added.
CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Leaders plan twin-city forum
The annual twin-city forum between Taipei and Shanghai is this year to be held by videoconference amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said on Wednesday. The two sides are in talks to choose a videoconferencing platform to use, as each side has expressed concerns, Ko said, adding: “Taiwan cannot use Huawei and China cannot use Google, so we are still figuring out how to resolve the issue.” Ko did not give a date for the meeting as preparations are still being made. The forum was launched in 2010 by then-Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), with each city taking turns hosting it, usually in July or August. Last year the forum was hosted by Shanghai on July 4. The event has served as a platform for cross-strait exchanges that focus on cultural and economic matters without touching on sovereignty issues.
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