■ LABOR
Taiwan labor ‘mostly free’
The Washington-based Freedom House has listed Taiwan as “mostly free” in a report on labor rights it released earlier this week. In “The Global State of Workers’ Rights: Free Labor in a Hostile World,” Taiwan and Japan, along with 36 other countries, were included in the “mostly free” group — the second best of five classifications used by the independent watchdog organization. South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and 38 other countries received the top ranking of “free”; China, Singapore, Afghanistan, Cambodia and 22 others were in the “repressive” group; and 14 countries including Myanmar, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam received the worst ranking of “very repressive.” After assessing trade unions and worker freedom in 165 countries, Freedom House said that one-third of the global population lives in societies in which “workers’ rights suffer a significant degree of repression.”
■AGRICULTURE
COA thanks fruit buyers
The Council of Agriculture (COA) yesterday expressed gratitude toward 16 enterprises and government units for purchasing overproduced fruit. Companies such as Yulon Group, First Bank, Quanta Computer and government ministries including the Ministry of National Defense bought 1,480 tonnes of bananas, papayas, guavas and oranges this year to help farmers handle the glut, the council said. Agriculture and Food Agency Director-General Chen Wen-deh (陳文德) said measures have been taken to deal with the problem, including decreasing farm lands devoted to fruit. For example, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corp has cut the amount of farmland it leases to banana farmers from 1,900 hectares in 2006 to 500 hectares this year, Chen said. Banana sales often slow in the domestic market in July and August because many other types of fruit are available in the summer, council officials said.
■AGRICULTURE
Kinmen cattle shipped
Fourteen yellow cattle bred on Kinmen were shipped to Taiwan proper on Friday, the first live cattle to be sent outside Kinmen since a 10-year ban came to an end at the end of last year. The ban was launched in 1999 because of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, almost causing the collapse of Kinmen’s livestock industry. Before the ban, there were about 5,000 head of cattle in Kinmen, local breeder Hsueh Hseng-shen (薛承琛) said. “Kinmen paid a painful price” for an epidemic that resulted from smuggling cattle from China, he said. Hsueh said Kinmen was a perfect place to raise cattle thanks to Kaoliang Liquor distillery cellars, which provide high-quality feed — distillers’ grains — for livestock.
■TRADE
Processed meats get nod
The COA said yesterday that Taiwan would be able to sell about 50 types of processed meat products to China after the two sides complete negotiations on the quarantine and inspection of agricultural products. The 50 items will include cooked pork, chicken and dumplings, said Hsu Kuei-sen (許桂森), chief of the Animal Husbandry Department. However, Hsu said he was not sure when the arrangements on quarantine and inspection would be finalized. All 50 products would carry the certified agricultural standards (CAS) logo, he said, adding that the COA has registered Taiwan’s CAS logo in China twice over the past five years to prevent it from being used by Chinese businesses. Taiwan launched the CAS program in 1989 to promote its agricultural products.
A magnitude 4.9 earthquake struck off Tainan at 11:47am today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 32.3km northeast of Tainan City Hall at a depth of 7.3km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Tainan and Chiayi County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Chiayi City and County, and Yunlin County, while it was measured as 2 in Kaohsiung, Nantou County, Changhua County, Taitung County and offshore Penghu County, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of
Weather conditions across Taiwan are expected to remain stable today, but cloudy to rainy skies are expected from tomorrow onward due to increasing moisture in the atmosphere, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). Daytime highs today are expected to hit 25-27°C in western Taiwan and 22-24°C in the eastern counties of Yilan, Hualien, and Taitung, data on the CWA website indicated. After sunset, temperatures could drop to 16-17°C in most parts of Taiwan. For tomorrow, precipitation is likely in northern Taiwan as a cloud system moves in from China. Daytime temperatures are expected to hover around 25°C, the CWA said. Starting Monday, areas
Taiwan has recorded its first fatal case of Coxsackie B5 enterovirus in 10 years after a one-year-old boy from southern Taiwan died from complications early last month, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. CDC spokesman Lo Yi-chun (羅一鈞) told a news conference that the child initially developed a fever and respiratory symptoms before experiencing seizures and loss of consciousness. The boy was diagnosed with acute encephalitis and admitted to intensive care, but his condition deteriorated rapidly, and he passed away on the sixth day of illness, Lo said. This also marks Taiwan’s third enterovirus-related death this year and the first severe
A Taiwanese software developer has created a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model to help people use AI without exposing sensitive data, project head Huang Chung-hsiao (黃崇校) said yesterday. Huang, a 55-year-old coder leading a US-based team, said that concerns over data privacy and security in popular generative AIs such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek motivated him to develop a personal AI assistant named “Mei.” One of the biggest security flaws with cloud-based algorithms is that users are required to hand over personal information to access the service, giving developers the opportunity to mine user data, he said. For this reason, many government agencies and