FOOD SECURITY
Food sites see traffic soar
The Council of Agriculture yesterday said online sellers of agricultural products have reported a 50 percent surge in sales from Tuesday last week, when the nation began to see an escalation of locally transmitted cases of COVID-19. Products flying off the shelves include frozen dumplings, pizza, rice, noodles and canned food, it said. The agency said that to boost supplies, it has stepped up efforts to connect more farmers with online operators. The agency assured the public, saying that there are ample supplies of aquatic and agricultural products online. The agency said there are 223,300 tonnes of fishery stocks — products ranging from tuna, salmon, shark and Pacific saury to squid — from fish farmers and frozen food providers. The inventory can support Taiwan for at least six months, it added.
REGISTRATION
TaipeiPASS downloads spike
Downloads of the Taipei City Government’s TaipeiPASS (台北通) application have skyrocketed since Saturday, when the city began requiring real-name registration at public spaces. Available for iOS and Android, users can connect their national identification card to the app by photographing both sides and then entering their telephone number. It then provides a QR code that users can present when entering an establishment, cutting down the time needed to register and allowing businesses to know whether a customer has been listed as a contact of a COVID-19 case. Users do not need to be Taipei residents to use the app.
EDUCATION
Third-years study from home
Students in Taipei, New Taipei City and Yilan who are in their third year of middle school or high school are to attend classes from home from today, the cities announced yesterday. As the grades have a relatively light workload at the moment, the effects would be relatively limited, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said. Those in their third year of middle school finished their high-school entrance exams yesterday, while most of those in their third year of high school have been accepted to university or are preparing to sit for subject exams in July. Taipei also announced the closure of the Lao Song, Long Shan, Shuang Yuan and Ying Qiao elementary schools in Wanhua District (萬華) for one week from today. Meanwhile, to avoid overcrowding on public transportation at peak hours, the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration yesterday announced that public employees would have flexible work hours until Friday next week. Employees who live or work in Taipei or New Taipei City can start any time from 7:30am to 10am and leave between 4:30pm and 7pm.
TAOYUAN
Claw machine shops shut
The Department of Economic Development yesterday announced that all claw machine stores in the city are to be shut until June 8 as part of disease prevention measures. The city said that the decision was made in consultation with the Police Department due to the stores being unsupervised, making it impossible to enforce real-name registration — a requirement of the level 3 COVID-19 alert. The city said that the police would patrol the city’s 1,068 claw machine stores, and would report any stores found operating illegally to the Department of Public Health, which could then issue fines. The policy would be amended as the outbreak situation changes, Department of Economic Development official Liao Chen-hung (廖振宏) said yesterday.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
A pro-Russia hacker group has launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Taiwanese government in retaliation for President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments suggesting that China should have a territorial dispute with Russia, an information security company said today. The hacker group, NoName057, recently launched an HTTPs flood attack called “DDoSia” targeting Taiwanese government and financial units, Radware told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). Local tax bureaus in New Taipei City, Keelung, Hsinchu and Taoyuan were mentioned by the hackers. Only the Hsinchu Local Tax Bureau site appeared to be down earlier in the day, but was back