DIPLOMACY
‘Middle-harvest’ list mulled
Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Bill Cho (卓士昭) yesterday said that the ministry would consider proposing a “middle-harvest” list of tariff concessions to China at the next talks on the cross-strait trade in goods agreement. Cho’s remarks came after Legislative Yuan Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said that to reduce the potential impact a China-South Korea free-trade agreement would have on Taiwan, the government might propose a “middle-harvest” list similar to the “early-harvest” list that lowers tariff barriers for certain products before the goods trade pact is finalized. Cho said the ministry would evaluate Wang’s suggestion, adding that its adoption or rejection depends on Beijing’s agreeing to the proposal.
FOREIGN RELATIONS
Israel to display water tech
A seminar on Israel’s water technology is to be held in Taipei later this month to promote bilateral exchanges in the field, the Israel Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei said in a statement. The seminar is set to take place on Nov. 28 and bring together representatives of eight Israeli companies to share their firms’ technologies and products with local enterprises in an effort to seek potential cooperation, said the office, which is co-organizing the event with the Water Resources Agency. The event agenda is to include discussions on desalination, wastewater management, and the management of drinking and recycled water quality, the office said, adding that Israel has developed advanced technologies to deal with its wastewater, 97 percent of which is reused for irrigation. It has also been exporting water technologies, including in desalination, wastewater recycling and drip irrigation, the office said.
OIL SCANDAL
List of tainted oils grows
At least 123 products have been ordered off store shelves since Nov. 3 after having been found to contain animal feed-grade oil, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said yesterday. The latest incident centers on oil makers Beei Hae Oil and Fats Co (北海油脂) and Hsieh Ching Corp (協慶企業), based in the south of the country. The pulled products weigh a total of 86,572kg and are tainted with animal feed-grade oil from Vietnam, the agency said. The 33 products that were added to the list yesterday include pasta and curry sauces supplied by two major food processors in New Taipei City, according to the FDA. The companies are Nomura Foods Co (野村食品) and Ai Wei Hsiang Co (愛味香), which does not appear to have a registered English name.
SOCIETY
Penny Tai registers marriage
Malaysian-Chinese singer-songwriter Penny Tai (戴佩妮) posted the design of her wedding banquet invitation on her Facebook page yesterday, while her agency confirmed that she and her Taiwanese fiance recently registered their marriage in Taiwan. “We are finally sending this out,” the 36-year-old singer said on Facebook. Tai’s agency confirmed that she and her fiance, Sydney Lu (盧信江), have registered their marriage in Taipei and will hold their wedding banquet at the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in Taipei. The wedding banquet, slated for Dec. 27, will take place as an outdoor party, the agency said. Tai won the Best Mandarin Female Singer award for her album Unexpected (純屬意外) at the 25th Golden Melody Awards in June. Tai, who released her debut album Penny in 2000, is known for her sonorous vocals and songwriting.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater