A US Department of Homeland Security delegation will visit Taipei next week to attend an international conference on homeland security, along with officials and experts from the EU, Malaysia and Israel, the Executive Yuan said yesterday.
The Executive Yuan’s Office of Homeland Security is organizing next Wednesday’s conference, which will be the third since the event was first held in 2010.
The office said this would be the last time Taiwan hosts the conference, which has served as a mechanism for the government to float strategies for cross-border cooperation on homeland security issues, “due to a lack of funds.”
Anne Witkowsky, deputy coordinator for homeland security and multilateral affairs in the US Department of State’s Bureau of Counterterrorism, had been scheduled to deliver an address on the shaping of US homeland security policy, but she will not able to take part because of scheduling problems, the office said.
On the conference agenda are issues such as border control policies related to counterterrorism, travel management, national strategy for global supply chains security and prevention and deterrence of terrorists act targeting infrastructure facilities, the office said.
Yvan De Mesmaeker, secretary-general of the European Corporate Security Association, Ilan Mizrachi, former head of Israel’s National Security Council, Monika Mosshammer from the European Commission’s Directorate General for Home Affairs, and Malaysian customs boss Dato Md Salleh Said are among those invited to the event, the office said.
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
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