To protect its fishermen, Taiwan will have to get tough with Japanese fishermen intruding into Taiwan's economic zone, authorities from the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) said yesterday.
Speaking at a symposium titled, "The Situation of Taiwan's Peripheral Seas and Relevant Policies," sponsored by the Ocean Business Research Committee, Chang Yuan-hsu (張元旭), director of the MOI Department of Land Administration, said that the central government is determined to address the thorny issue of Taiwan's fishing disputes with Japan.
On the prospects of the approaching 15th round of Taiwan-Japan fishing talks, which is expected to primarily tackle the problems of overlapping exclusive economic zones, Chang said that Japan is not expected to yield much or make its position known in the meeting for fear of agitating China -- whose "one China" policy identifies Taiwan as part of China.
Chang continued to say that even if Taiwan-related affairs are brought to the negotiating table, the Taiwanese negotiating team is at a disadvantage due to the country's abnormal diplomatic status. Taiwan and Japan do not maintain official diplomatic relations.
However, Chang said that if Japanese fishermen experienced the same miserable treatment that has been suffered by Taiwan fishermen, Japan would have a different attitude at the talks.
Chang said a viable strategy for Taiwan could be to take tougher measures against Japanese fishing boats, such as impounding their vessels and fining the boat owners for trespassing on Taiwan's exclusive economic zone, to prevent losing leverage in the upcoming talks.
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
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
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