■ HEALTH
Octopus balls melamine-free
Taichung County’s Public Health Bureau said yesterday that samples from a recent shipment of octopus balls from Shandong Province in China were found to be free of melamine after samples of the shipment in question were sent to the Bureau of Food and Drug Analysis for testing. The Department of Health has ordered the importer to halt sales of the octopus balls — a popular round dumpling — as a precautionary measure after trace amounts of melamine were discovered in similar products tested in Japan. The department had asked Kaohsiung County to check the octopus balls, which were imported by a company registered in the county, but county officials found they had already been sold to a distributor in Taichung County. The imported shipment came from a different supplier than those found to have problems in Japan, which originated from Fujian Province.
■ CRIME
Amphetamine plant raided
Police raided an amphetamine production facility in Pingtung County’s Chaojhou Township (潮州) on Thursday night, arresting two suspects and seizing nearly 55kg of partly processed amphetamine and production equipment. Chaojhou Township police said yesterday that the partly processed amphetamine had an estimated street value of about NT$100 million (US$3.07 million). A 26-year-old man surnamed Chou and a 20-year-old surnamed Wang were arrested, police said. After receiving a tip, police said they staked out the suspected amphetamine production facility in Chaojhou for 20 days before carrying out the raid on Thursday night. Police said the two men rented the place last year and began producing amphetamines at the site about two months ago.
■ CULTURE
228 park to host concert
The Taipei City Government will hold a memorial concert for musician Lu Chuan-sheng, (呂泉生), a well-known composer of the 1940s and 1950s, at 6:30pm today in the Taipei 228 Memorial Park after Lu passed away earlier this year. Traditional Taiwanese folksongs, such as If I Open My Eyes and Mind (阮若打開心內的門窗) and Lullaby (搖嬰仔歌), were written by Lu, reflecting Taiwan’s situation during World War II. He also collected and preserved many Taiwanese folksongs including Diu-Diu Dang (丟丟銅). The concert will run until 9:30pm. Concertgoers are welcome to visit the 228 Memorial Museum, where original manuscripts of Lu’s compositions are on display.
■ EDUCATION
APEC camp awards prizes
Two young Taiwanese adults received top prizes for their research papers on the country’s water culture at an APEC camp, the National Youth Commission (NYC) said in a statement yesterday. The two winners, a man and a woman in their 20s, won the awards at the 2008 APEC Youth Camp, an event held under the framework of the APEC forum in Peru from Oct. 1 to Oct. 6. The theme of the camp was “Caring for Sustainable Development in the Asia-Pacific Region.” Among the four-member delegation, Cheng Yu-hsung’s (鄭佑軒) thesis on renovating Love River (愛河) in Kaohsiung City garnered the Best Essay Award, while Wang Chih-hua (王芷華) won the prize for the Most Interesting Essay with a paper on coastal water resources in Chiayi County.
■ SCIENCE
Birthday open day planned
Academia Sinica will celebrate its 80th birthday on Oct. 25 by inviting the public to have some fun with its academicians and staff at an open day. A press statement issued by Academia Sinica in Taipei yesterday said the open day would include 31 popular science lectures — including one given by academician Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), former minister of the National Science Council, titled “Environments, Genes and Human Diseases” — as well as a jazz-classic fusion concert and a children’s show. Visitors would also be able to tour the 46 core science facilities at the center, including the Genomics Research Center, or take a ride in the experimental car at the Institute of Earth Sciences, the statement said. Those interested in finding out more can read more information on the open day at www.sinica.edu.tw.
■ EDUCATION
Free school lunches mulled
Minister of Education Cheng Jei-cheng (鄭瑞城) said yesterday that his ministry hopes to be able to provide free lunches to all elementary and junior high school students by 2010. Cheng made the remarks at a question-and-answer session of the Education and Culture Committee at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, during which the issue of children from underprivileged families who are unable to afford the lunch fees at schools was raised. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Tsai Chin-lung (蔡錦隆) said the government had been generous in its funding of the nation’s top universities and that it should also find the money to fund a free lunch program in all elementary and junior high schools. Pressed by Tsai on when free lunches would be possible, Cheng said the education budget for next year had already been appropriated, but that he was looking at implementing some sort of program in 2010. The latest government statistics showed that around 140,000 students, 5.6 percent of the elementary and junior high school student population, were not able to afford to pay for school lunches.
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
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