The government is expected to launch an investigation into 10 imported Chinese beer brands to see if they violate the law by containing cancer-causing methanol, said Liu Teng-cheng (劉燈城), director-general of the treasury department under the Ministry of Finance.
"If the China-brewed beers test methanol-positive, their distributors will be subject to trial and sales will be immediately banned," Liu told a press conference yesterday afternoon.
Liu said distributors whose beer imports are proven to be methanol-positive may face a jail term of up to one year or a fine of between NT$300,000 to NT$1 million.
The 10 beers are Tsingtao Beer (青島啤酒), Jinwei Beer (金威啤酒), Blue Belt Beer (藍貝啤酒), Yanjing Beer (燕京啤酒), Chongqing Beer (重慶啤酒), Yantei Beer (煙台啤酒), Zhonghua Beer (中華啤酒), Huiquan Beer (惠全啤酒), Jinchi Beer (金匙啤酒) and Boss Beer.
Health authorities expect to finish collecting the beer samples today. They have also requested distributors provide them with details of the beers' brewing process.
The test results will be available in a week, said Chen Lu-hung (
Liu said Chinese beers held a 9 percent market share in the first five months this year.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained