■ HEALTH
Octopus balls melamine-free
Taichung County’s Public Health Bureau said yesterday that samples from a recent shipment of octopus balls from Shandong Province in China were found to be free of melamine after samples of the shipment in question were sent to the Bureau of Food and Drug Analysis for testing. The Department of Health has ordered the importer to halt sales of the octopus balls — a popular round dumpling — as a precautionary measure after trace amounts of melamine were discovered in similar products tested in Japan. The department had asked Kaohsiung County to check the octopus balls, which were imported by a company registered in the county, but county officials found they had already been sold to a distributor in Taichung County. The imported shipment came from a different supplier than those found to have problems in Japan, which originated from Fujian Province.
■ CRIME
Amphetamine plant raided
Police raided an amphetamine production facility in Pingtung County’s Chaojhou Township (潮州) on Thursday night, arresting two suspects and seizing nearly 55kg of partly processed amphetamine and production equipment. Chaojhou Township police said yesterday that the partly processed amphetamine had an estimated street value of about NT$100 million (US$3.07 million). A 26-year-old man surnamed Chou and a 20-year-old surnamed Wang were arrested, police said. After receiving a tip, police said they staked out the suspected amphetamine production facility in Chaojhou for 20 days before carrying out the raid on Thursday night. Police said the two men rented the place last year and began producing amphetamines at the site about two months ago.
■ CULTURE
228 park to host concert
The Taipei City Government will hold a memorial concert for musician Lu Chuan-sheng, (呂泉生), a well-known composer of the 1940s and 1950s, at 6:30pm today in the Taipei 228 Memorial Park after Lu passed away earlier this year. Traditional Taiwanese folksongs, such as If I Open My Eyes and Mind (阮若打開心內的門窗) and Lullaby (搖嬰仔歌), were written by Lu, reflecting Taiwan’s situation during World War II. He also collected and preserved many Taiwanese folksongs including Diu-Diu Dang (丟丟銅). The concert will run until 9:30pm. Concertgoers are welcome to visit the 228 Memorial Museum, where original manuscripts of Lu’s compositions are on display.
■ EDUCATION
APEC camp awards prizes
Two young Taiwanese adults received top prizes for their research papers on the country’s water culture at an APEC camp, the National Youth Commission (NYC) said in a statement yesterday. The two winners, a man and a woman in their 20s, won the awards at the 2008 APEC Youth Camp, an event held under the framework of the APEC forum in Peru from Oct. 1 to Oct. 6. The theme of the camp was “Caring for Sustainable Development in the Asia-Pacific Region.” Among the four-member delegation, Cheng Yu-hsung’s (鄭佑軒) thesis on renovating Love River (愛河) in Kaohsiung City garnered the Best Essay Award, while Wang Chih-hua (王芷華) won the prize for the Most Interesting Essay with a paper on coastal water resources in Chiayi County.
■ SCIENCE
Birthday open day planned
Academia Sinica will celebrate its 80th birthday on Oct. 25 by inviting the public to have some fun with its academicians and staff at an open day. A press statement issued by Academia Sinica in Taipei yesterday said the open day would include 31 popular science lectures — including one given by academician Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), former minister of the National Science Council, titled “Environments, Genes and Human Diseases” — as well as a jazz-classic fusion concert and a children’s show. Visitors would also be able to tour the 46 core science facilities at the center, including the Genomics Research Center, or take a ride in the experimental car at the Institute of Earth Sciences, the statement said. Those interested in finding out more can read more information on the open day at www.sinica.edu.tw.
■ EDUCATION
Free school lunches mulled
Minister of Education Cheng Jei-cheng (鄭瑞城) said yesterday that his ministry hopes to be able to provide free lunches to all elementary and junior high school students by 2010. Cheng made the remarks at a question-and-answer session of the Education and Culture Committee at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, during which the issue of children from underprivileged families who are unable to afford the lunch fees at schools was raised. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Tsai Chin-lung (蔡錦隆) said the government had been generous in its funding of the nation’s top universities and that it should also find the money to fund a free lunch program in all elementary and junior high schools. Pressed by Tsai on when free lunches would be possible, Cheng said the education budget for next year had already been appropriated, but that he was looking at implementing some sort of program in 2010. The latest government statistics showed that around 140,000 students, 5.6 percent of the elementary and junior high school student population, were not able to afford to pay for school lunches.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Taiwan is to have nine extended holidays next year, led by a nine-day Lunar New Year break, the Cabinet announced yesterday. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday next year matches the length of this year’s holiday, which featured six extended holidays. The increase in extended holidays is due to the Act on the Implementation of Commemorative and Festival Holidays (紀念日及節日實施條例), which was passed early last month with support from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party. Under the new act, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve is also a national holiday, and Labor Day would no longer be limited
COMMITMENTS: The company had a relatively low renewable ratio at 56 percent and did not have any goal to achieve 100 percent renewable energy, the report said Pegatron Corp ranked the lowest among five major final assembly suppliers in progressing toward Apple Inc’s commitment to be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030, a Greenpeace East Asia report said yesterday. While Apple has set the goal of using 100 percent renewable energy across its entire business, supply chain and product lifecycle by 2030, carbon emissions from electronics manufacturing are rising globally due to increased energy consumption, it said. Given that carbon emissions from its supply chain accounted for more than half of its total emissions last year, Greenpeace East Asia evaluated the green transition performance of Apple’s five largest final
The first tropical storm of the year in the western North Pacific, Wutip (蝴蝶), has formed over the South China Sea and is expected to move toward Hainan Island off southern China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. The agency said a tropical depression over waters near the Paracel and Zhongsha islands strengthened into a tropical storm this morning. The storm had maximum sustained winds near its center of 64.8kph, with peak gusts reaching 90kph, it said. Winds at Beaufort scale level 7 — ranging from 50kph to 61.5kph — extended up to 80km from the center, it added. Forecaster Kuan Hsin-ping
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