Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) has set Friday as the deadline for Formosa Petrochemical Corp to submit a report detailing reasons behind a recent fire at its oil refinery in Mailiao (麥寮), Yunlin County, and plans for improvement.
“Formosa Petrochemical’s No. 6 naphtha cracker plant in Mailiao will not be allowed to re-open unless the cause of the fire is discovered and operational safety is fully guaranteed, “Wu said on Saturday while on an inspection tour of the Taichung area.
Wu said the Council of Labor Affairs will invite academics to take part in the review, following a suggestion by Yunlin County Commissioner Su Chih-fen (蘇治芬).
“The most important thing for now is to mitigate the damage of the fire, regardless of political affiliations in central and local governments,” Wu said, adding: “Everyone knows clearly which party was in power in the central government from 2000 to 2008.
The fire at the company’s No. 6 naphtha cracker plant on July 25 — the second fire in a month — provoked anger from local residents, but Wu praised the handling of the incident by both the county government and Formosa Petrochemical.
Operations have been suspended since the fire broke out. It is estimated Formosa Petrochemical could suffer losses of about NT$20 billion (US$625,247 million) per month while the plant is shut, undermining the profits of its affiliates.
Formosa Petrochemical chairman Wang Wen-yuan (王文淵) made a public apology on Friday, offering assurances that his company will take care of the problem and provide compensation where necessary.
Commenting on a Taipei High Administrative Court ruling on Friday that an expansion project at the Central Taiwan Science Park in Changhua County’s Erlin Township (二林) be shelved temporarily due to environmental concerns, Wu said he will ask government agencies to review the issue.
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) approved the project last November after it passed an environment impact assessment. However, Erlin residents filed an appeal with the Taipei High Administrative Court asking that the project be halted or scrapped because of EPA negligence in the assessment.
The panel of judges said Friday’s ruling was not a final verdict, but a contingency measure to safeguard the interests of local farmers who are losing land because of the science park expansion.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not