A legislative aide delegation was forced to cancel a plan to travel to China recently after Beijing refused to issue entry permits to some delegation members, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Vice Chairman Chiu Tai-san (
According to Chiu, Beijing authorities denied permits to some staffers of the Legislative Yuan's legal affairs bureau. Chiu said the MAC is unaware of the reasons for Beijing's entry permit snubs. He declined to comment on media speculation that Beijing has decided to suppress engagement with Taiwan's "pan-green" politicians after President Chen Shui-bian (
Chiu said that although Beijing has been vocal in opposing Taiwan's independence, it has yet to formulate concrete steps for a campaign to snub pan-green politicians.
"Against this backdrop, some lower-level Chinese officials would rather adopt a tough stance than a soft one in handling cross-strait exchange affairs, to avoid being blamed by their superiors," Chiu explained.
Moreover, Chiu said, since the Chinese Communist Party will soon hold the fourth plenary session of its 16th-term Central Committee, working-level Chinese officials are believed to be reluctant to handle any sensitive Taiwan-related affairs.
Quoting MAC tallies, Chiu said the number of Chinese professionals coming to Taiwan dropped slightly between March and May, probably because of Taiwan's political climate. Nevertheless, he added, the number of Chinese professionals coming to Taiwan for cultural, commercial and social exchanges rebounded to the normal level between June and July.
Chinese academics often travel to Taiwan during the summer to attend seminars or conduct research But this summer, the number of Chinese think tank members traveling to Taiwan has declined.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
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