HEALTH
Two milk formulas recalled
Two milk formula products imported from the Netherlands are suspected of being contaminated with salmonella and have been ordered removed from store shelves, health officials said yesterday. The Department of Health was alerted by the EU on Thursday night that two products imported by Taipei-based Youluck International Inc might have been contaminated, a Taipei health official said. The two products are Youluck Growing-up Goat Milk Formula and Youluck Infant Milk Formula. Officials sent by city health authority found that the company has imported 2,521 cartons of Growing-up Goat Milk Formula (one carton has 12 cans) and 881 cartons of Youluck Infant Milk Formula since last year. The products have been mostly distributed to pharmacies, and baby and infant product outlets, the official said, adding that an alert has been sent to health authorities nationwide.
AEROSPACE
AIDC inks deal in Britain
The nation’s state-owned aerospace company said yesterday that it has signed a cooperation agreement with Britain-based Meggitt Defence Systems on the manufacture of components for Banshee target drones, one of the British firm’s products. Once a sample of drone parts manufactured by Aerospace Industrial Development Corp (AIDC) has been approved by Meggit, AIDC would receive an annual order for 250 drones from the firm, an AIDC press release said. The deal was signed two days earlier at the Farnborough International Airshow in England. If AIDC wins the order, it would mark the first time that components of British defense products have been manufactured in Taiwan. Rob Davies, managing director at Meggitt Defence Systems, confirmed the deal and said that if all goes well, the company plans to order AIDC-made parts for at least 2,500 drones over the next 10 years.
DEFENSE
Minister thanks Stanton
Minister of National Defense Kao Hua-chu (高華柱) has expressed his thanks to American Institute in Taiwan Director William Stanton, Washington’s top representative in Taiwan, for his help in facilitating an arms deal that was concluded earlier this month, the ministry said on Thursday. Stanton met with Kao and other ranking military officials recently after the ministry approved a US proposal to upgrade Taiwan’s aging F-16 A/B jets. During the meeting, Kao thanked Stanton for facilitating the deal worth an estimated US$3.8 billion and for his general contribution to Taiwan-US military relations during his three-year term.
HEALTH
CDC issues Games warning
Taiwanese going to London for the Olympic Games should get vaccinated against pertussis, or whooping cough, because of the high incidence of the disease in Britain recently, said the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The number of confirmed whooping cough cases in England and Wales has been on the rise since the beginning of the second quarter of the year, CDC Deputy Director-General Chou Jih-haw (周志浩) said. He said there were 1,781 reported cases in the first five months of this year, compared with only between 137 and 322 cases in the same period from 2008 to last year. “Taiwan’s current vaccination program covers whooping cough. Children are vaccinated in four doses, at two months, four months, six months and 18 months, but because the vaccination does not provide lifelong protection, adults traveling to the UK may want to get booster shots,” he said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods