Residents are invited to donate secondhand goods for a Nov. 21 flea market, with all of the proceeds to benefit the city’s less-privileged children and teenagers, the New Taipei City Environmental Protection Department said on Monday.
The annual charity sale, in its sixth year, is part of the city’s effort to recycle resources to help those in need, the department said, adding that the past five events have generated NT$3.08 million (US$106,501) in sales.
People can donate by handing functioning items to city staff on garbage trucks or at garbage collection sites, it said, adding that preferred donations include toys, bags, small home appliances and furniture, and bicycles.
Photo courtesy of the New Taipei City Environmental Protection Department
The department said that it would set up stalls featuring goods from overseas to give people the feeling of being abroad, as the COVID-19 pandemic has made it impossible for most to travel to other countries.
Foreigners and immigrants are especially welcome to donate secondhand goods that represent their cultures, it added.
The event is to be held at 2pm at New Taipei City Plaza in Banciao District (板橋), the department said, adding that details can be found on its Web site.
In other news, Pingtung County’s Chaozhou Township (潮州) Office on Monday said that people who donate to its emergency fund would receive a national flag designed especially for this year’s Double Ten National Day.
The emergency fund, set up to help the township’s low-income families and socially vulnerable people, totals NT$500,000, but once totaled nearly NT$1 million, Chaojhou Chief Secretary Wang Chien-yuan (王建元) said.
Many people expressed an interest in having a flag after seeing them decorate the township roads over the long holiday weekend, so the township decided to combine a flag giveaway with a charity drive, the office said.
The first 100 people who donate more than NT$500 to the emergency fund would receive one of the flags, with a limit of one per person, it said, adding that more details on making donations and claiming flags are to be announced by the end of this month.
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