President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) proposed setting up a hotline with Beijing yesterday to ensure food safety and public health in Taiwan.
Ma said China’s milk producers should be condemned for making tainted milk powder and that while they were drastic measures, he supported the Executive Yuan’s effort to request compensation from Chinese milk firms and to recall Chinese-made milk powder and vegetable proteins.
“In the long run, the government must have a sound understanding of China’s food safety and consumer protection mechanisms and set up a hotline to obtain information from China,” he told members of the Taiwan Medical Association at the Presidential Office.
Ma said the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration had allowed the import of milk products from China, but that as a responsible government the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration would take up the responsibility of protecting the health of the Taiwanese public.
“I would like to remind civil servants around the country that it is the responsibility of the government to address the public’s concerns,” he said. “We must deal with it, not walk away from it, because it is our duty to protect the public’s health.”
Describing the scandal as “something beyond our control,” Ma said the government must handle the matter calmly and practically.
Meanwhile, Straits Exchange Foundation Secretary-General Kao Kong-lian (高孔廉) said yesterday he had met members of China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait to discuss the scandal and other issues.
Kao, who returned from Macau yesterday, said he conveyed Taiwan’s concern over the incident and the hope that China would offer assistance. He also hoped that experts from both sides could work together to tackle the problem.
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have declared they survived recall votes to remove them from office today, although official results are still pending as the vote counting continues. Although final tallies from the Central Election Commission (CEC) are still pending, preliminary results indicate that the recall campaigns against all seven KMT lawmakers have fallen short. As of 6:10 pm, Taichung Legislators Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) and Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔), Hsinchu County Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘), Nantou County Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and New Taipei City Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才) had all announced they
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday visited Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), as the chipmaker prepares for volume production of Nvidia’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips. It was Huang’s third trip to Taiwan this year, indicating that Nvidia’s supply chain is deeply connected to Taiwan. Its partners also include packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) and server makers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達). “My main purpose is to visit TSMC,” Huang said yesterday. “As you know, we have next-generation architecture called Rubin. Rubin is very advanced. We have now taped out six brand new
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
RSS