■ FOOD
Cherries contain pesticide
About 6 tonnes of cherries recently imported from the US were found to contain the pesticide malathion, the Department of Health said. Pan Chih-kuan (潘志寬), a director at the department’s Food and Drug Administration, said two shipments of cherries contained 0.02 parts per million and 0.03ppm of malathion respectively. Taiwanese regulations do not allow any trace amounts of the substance. The two importers are now applying to have the two batches re-examined. If they are still found to contain the pesticide, the first batch, which was not cleared by customs, will be returned to the shipper, while the second, which was released to the importer to be refrigerated pending the results of the examination, would be confiscated and destroyed. Pan said that if a third batch of US imported cherries failed an examination in the next six months, the department would ask the US to come up with a plan to improve the situation.
■ PROTEST
Wuer Kaixi released
Japanese authorities released Wuer Kaixi (吾爾開希), a student leader in Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests, yesterday after arresting him for allegedly trying to force his way into the Chinese embassy in Tokyo on the anniversary of the crackdown. The 42-year-old activist, who allegedly jumped over a small steel fence in front of the embassy on Friday, was quickly overpowered by police and arrested. A Tokyo police spokesman confirmed the release of Wuer Kaixi, now a Republic of China citizen, but declined to give further details. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.
■ TOURISM
Chinese tourists satisfied
About 94 percent of the Chinese tourists who have visited Taiwan so far this year were satisfied with their tours, surveys held by the Taiwan Strait Tourism Association showed. That figure represented a rise of 10 percentage points over last year, said Yang Ruey-tzhong (楊瑞宗), chief of the Beijing branch of the association. A breakdown of the figures shows that tour bus drivers earned the highest approval rating of 98.9 percent, compared with 94.2 percent last year, while the level of satisfaction with meals in Taiwan was 82.5 percent, down from 84.6 percent last year, Yang said. Citing statistics compiled by the Taiwanese authorities, Yang said 600,000 Chinese tourists and 370,000 business people visited Taiwan last year. The figures are expected to grow this year to 1 million and 500,000, respectively, he said.
■ FOOD
Taiwan to hold US inspection
Taiwan will send officials to conduct on-site inspections of slaughterhouses that export beef to Taiwan, Department of Health Minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) said yesterday. Yaung said the move, scheduled for August or September, was to ensure that all US beef exports are adequately labeled, as required by the country’s regulations. “Five to 10 slaughterhouses or packing facilities in the US will be inspected by Taiwanese officials this time,” Yaung said in response to questions on the latest US calls for Taiwan to accelerate its imports of US beef products. In a meeting on the sidelines of the conference of APEC trade ministers in Sapporo, Japan, US officials told their Taiwanese counterparts that Washington would like to see Taipei speed up its examination procedures and customs clearance for US beef imports. The legislature revised laws late last year to ban imports of certain US beef products, including skulls, brains, eyes and internal organs.
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
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,