Pandemic measures continue to grow.
Government-funded banks and Chunghwa Post will require people to leave their personal information when they get new bank notes for the Lunar New Year, as a precaution to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Similarly, the physical 2021 Taipei International Machine Tool Show (TIMTOS), which was scheduled to open in March, will be postponed to an as-yet undecided date due to a surge in domestic cases.
The show will still take place March 15-April 15 in a virtual format.
In other pandemic news, a man penalised for breaching Covid quarantine regulations has had his fine revoked after it emerged he had been kidnapped by debt collectors.
At a public hearing at the legislature on “normalizing” the nation, DPP legislators proposed changing the national anthem and the Constitution.
I will discuss this more on my analysis show Taiwan Report News Brief.
According to the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER), manufacturing activity in Taiwan expanded in January for the seventh consecutive month, with the seasonally adjusted Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rising to its highest level in more than eight years.
However, they cautioned that soaring shipping and raw material prices threaten to erode corporate profitability.
Taiwan ranked second, behind Singapore, in a new health index that measures progress toward personalized healthcare in Asia-Pacific countries.
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Asia-Pacific Personalized Health Index praised Taiwan for its “strong digital infrastructure, comprehensive health data collection, increasing data interoperability and signs of a robust personalized health workforce.”
The report said that Taiwan could further bolster its position by “increasing investment in healthcare research and development and improving the accessibility of data for research.”
The Nordic Monitor is reporting the following:
Operatives in the Turkish Trade Office in Taipei spied on critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who had long resided in Taiwan, a document obtained by Nordic Monitor has revealed.
The two-page document, apparently prepared by officials posted to the trade office and sent to headquarters in Ankara, listed information gathered on nine Turkish nationals in Taiwan.
The article goes on to point out why this is alarming:
The spying activities pursued by Turkish operatives under the cover of official representation is part of a worldwide campaign by the Erdoğan government to hunt down critics, mainly those from the Gülen movement and the Kurdish opposition political bloc.
The Turkish government’s campaign in foreign countries went as far as kidnapping attempts in Europe and the United States.
An agreement between Taiwan and Poland on legal cooperation on criminal matters has been signed by the Polish President.
Photo by Meg Jerrard on Unsplash
