Taiwan is asking the US to explain why bogus electronic parts, many from China, have found their way into its military equipment, a defense official said yesterday, after a US Senate report found the problem to be widespread.
The ministry has asked the US government about the report and how it plans to address the problem, Deputy Minister of National Defense Chao Shih-chang (趙世璋) said at a hearing of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee.
Responding to questions from Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲), who expressed concern about the situation because the US is Taiwan’s main arms supplier, Chao said the ministry asked the US to tighten quality control measures on military equipment for Taiwan.
“[The ministry] has not received a response from the US,” Chao said.
The findings of Chinese-made counterfeit electronic parts in US-made military equipment raised concerns over the quality and security of weapons systems sold to Taiwan by the US, Huang said.
Meanwhile, Chao said the ministry follows rigorous sourcing policies when making procurements.
“We have a strict policy of not purchasing items and materials made in China,” he said.
On May 21, the US Senate Armed Services Committee published a report on counterfeit electronic parts in the country’s defense supply chain.
The investigation found that the use of bogus parts was a widespread problem, identifying 1,800 cases of counterfeit electronic parts during in 2009 and 2010.
The US committee tracked 100 of the 1,800 cases and traced more than 70 percent of the suspect parts to China.
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,