The Department of Health has sent a letter to the Hsinchu County Government criticizing a proposal to promote betel nut to Chinese tourists.
According to local media reports, Hsinchu County Commissioner Chiu Ching-chun (邱鏡淳) is planning to lead a delegation of female betel nut sellers to a food fair in Nanjing in September. Chiu had reportedly said that Taiwan could market the betel nut as a Taiwanese specialty to the Chinese, who are very curious about Taiwanese culture.
In Taiwan, betel nut is usually sold at roadside stands by skimpily clad young women. The betel nut industry creates up to NT$50 billion (US$1.7 billion) in revenues each year, Chiu said.
However, the Bureau of Health Promotion said in the letter it sent on Wednesday that betel nut was listed as a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2003. Betel nut not only causes oral cancer, chewers who also smoke tobacco or drink liquor have a greater risk of developing throat and esophageal cancer, the bureau said.
It is more important to maintain Taiwan’s international image and make the health of the next generation the top priority, rather than considering only what boosts our local economy, said Chen Mei-ju (陳美如), section chief of the bureau.
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:
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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