HEALTH
I-Mei fined for expired food
Taoyuan County’s Public Health Bureau yesterday fined I-Mei Foods for using expired ingredients in one of their products and said it has referred the case to the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office for investigation. The bureau fined I-Mei Foods NT$150,000 (US$5,000) based on the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法) and asked the company to recall the products, and improve production management and control. Prosecutors said I-Mei’s factory in Longtan Township (龍潭) used more than 9,000kg of expired soy protein isolate to make an estimated 5.76 million packs of cream puffs from 2011 to last year. Of the total produced, 4.32 million packs had been consumed, they said. The bureau said I-Mei Foods was trying to recall the cream puffs from its most recent batch of 1.44 million packs that are still on the market.
NATIONAL DEFENSE
Systems failure mooted
A systems failure may have been the reason a two-seater Mirage 2000-5 fighter jet crashed into the Taiwan Strait on Monday during a regular training mission, the air force said on Tuesday, citing the results of an initial investigation. The Mirage plowed into the sea off Hsinchu County, with its two pilots ejecting and parachuting to safety. A task force is continuing to investigate the cause of the crash and all the nation’s Mirage 2000-5s have been grounded for safety inspections. Officials said a failure in the hydraulic pressure and power systems may have caused the crash, but added that the exact cause could not be determined until after a thorough investigation of the wreckage, the black boxes and on-board video. The incident was the second crash within five days. An F-16 crashed during a training mission off Chiayi County on Wednesday last week.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai