The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) is to prepare the nation’s first five-year plan for carbon emission reduction as soon as possible, based on the agreement reached at the UN conference on climate change in Paris, EPA Minister Wei Kuo-yen (魏國彥) said on Thursday.
Wei said the plan is expected to be developed in January or February and would emphasize on reviewing the nation’s energy suppliers.
Wei, who is in Paris to attend meetings within the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), made the remarks during a teleconference with local journalists.
Although Taiwan is not party to the UNFCCC, it has a 50-member delegation attending COP21 meetings as part of a non-governmental organization of the Industrial Technology Research Institute.
Wei is the nation’s first EPA minister to take part in COP climate change meetings, although Taiwan remains excluded from the UNFCCC meeting as a political entity.
Wei said that possible ways to utilize UN climate change adaptation funds have been a topic of discussion at COP21.
As the majority of nations in the southern hemisphere are developing nations that emit less carbon dioxide, but face serious risks, they tend to have opinions on how funds should be distributed, he said.
The fund has a target of US$100 billion, with US$65 billion having been obtained, but some nations in the southern hemisphere have said it is still not enough, he 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
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
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,
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