The Executive Yuan is planning to incorporate the Consumer Protection Commission (CPC) into an Executive Yuan secretariat, Vice Premier Paul Chiu (邱正雄), who concurrently serves as CPC minister, said on Monday.
Chiu said Control Yuan members who visited the CPC for an inspection were satisfied with the performance and function of the CPC, which receives an annual budget of just NT$100 million (US$3.3 million), a fragment of the annual budget.
Chiu said he proposed subsuming the CPC to the level of a section under the Executive Yuan, but the Control Yuan members expressed a preference for the commission to remain independent of the Cabinet.
If the organization were to be simplified, Chiu said, the CPC would be directly under the Cabinet and able to work more efficiently. He added that he would consult further on the issue with the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, which performs policy planning, evaluation, coordination and integration functions.
Control Yuan members also expressed satisfaction with the way the CPC dealt with a recent incident involving Dell Inc, as well as a recent tainted cooking oil scandal.
The CPC pressured Dell’s Taiwan operation to come up with a satisfactory solution in response to a glitch that occurred when online shoppers took advantage of an error that saw the company offering laptops at a 75 percent discount. Dell canceled the offer as soon as the error was detected and provided coupons for those who had already placed orders, the value of which the company increased a few days later after an outcry by disappointed shoppers and intervention by the CPC.
In the other incident, cooking oil containing high amounts of arsenic was found at two McDonald’s outlets and one Domino’s Pizza store, all in Taipei County. The CPC warned fast food chains that they would face fines if subsequent tests showed no improvement. The case is currently in the courts.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
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