Non-governmental organizations (NGO) yesterday said they would send a team of 15 representatives to attend the UN’s upcoming Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development — also known as Rio Earth Summit 2012 — in Brazil, to exchange knowledge on green economy and the institutional framework for sustainable development with the world.
Although Taiwan is not a member state of the UN, the Taiwan Action NGOs (TANGO) — an association of eight Taiwanese NGOs that is concerned with environmental issues — said they would head to Rio de Janeiro as civic participants tomorrow to interact with more than 150 civic groups from around the world.
TANGO team leader and Taiwan Environmental Protection Union president Juju Wang (王俊秀) said at a press conference that the meaning of “green economy” had been simplified as green energy and carbon reduction by the government, which he said is a clear misunderstanding, and so TANGO’s main goal is to bring back experience and knowledge from other countries.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Wang said the team would also present environmental issues on agriculture, food safety, community development and other aspects, as well as introduce the 22 endemic species of wild birds in Taiwan to other countries.
At the press conference, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) said many people outside the country have the impression that Taiwanese are good at doing business and that many products are made from factories in Taiwan, but the importance of TANGO’s participation is to show the world that there are also many people who are making efforts to protect Taiwan’s environment and be responsible members of the global community.
“We hope to learn how other countries deal with environmental issues at a community level, such as the problematic use of toxic furnace bottom ash,” TANGO member and Tainan Community University instructor Lin Yuan-li (林元笠) said, adding that “voices from communities are more direct, without the information being screened by the governments in advance.”
Another attending member, lead vocalist Chiang Yu-ta (江育達) of the band The Village Armed Youth (農村武裝青年) sang a song called Formosa Etude at the press conference and said that aside from being seen at the exhibition stand, he hopes Taiwan’s voice can also be heard by the rest of the world.
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,